Since I am finishing my first semester of graduate school, I have some things to share. Before I started as a masters student, my thoughts of graduate school were colored by what I heard at top tier research schools. However, when I started at a modest state school, I discovered graduate school was not what I had expected.
At the school where I am, the masters program seems like a simple extension of their undergraduate program. Compared to their bachelors classes, the only differences are the teachers teach less and most of my classmates are from India. I was taking a survey the other day and I realized something. While I am happy I am in school working toward an electrical engineering degree, I am displeased with the quality of my classes, professors, and the education overall. If I could have gotten into a better graduate school, I would have gone there instead.
I have experienced some interesting moments in graduate school. Since these gems of higher learning will not be experienced by a lot of people, I want to share them with you.
Impediment to learning
In one of my classes we were filling out instructor evaluations. For the question of "Were there any impediments to your learning?" someone wrote "the professor." He was right.
The value of timely work
I put off doing a lab for one of my classes. I had to simulate a circuit and then layout another circuit on silicon as if it was being constructed on an integrated circuit. When I told one of my friends I did not have the lab working, he emailed me the files. With a couple of quick changes, I demonstrated the working lab to the professor and received full credit for the demonstration. Sometimes it pays to procrastinate.
Understanding an important algorithm
I had a lab due for my VLSI class. It was supposed to be a Viterbi encoder/decoder. However, neither the professor nor anyone in class could explain how the complete algorithm worked. The people I knew just took an example in the textbook and made some changes to it. I built a glorified shift register. It takes the inputs, stores them, then displays them two cycles later so it looks like it does the processing it needs. It completely side-stepped the XOR gates and PSK transmitting I was supposed to do. Since there was no noise in our simulation, any other stuff I added would be unnecessary and optimized out by the IDE. However, the professor was happy when I showed him a working program. I wrote up the report and included a figure and table from the textbook on the part I did not do.
Getting your work back
With a week left in the semester, one of my professors decided it was a good time to give us back our graded work from the semester. He handed back seven homework assignments. However, he did not grade them; he just put a check mark on the front. There was a problem where I just wrote the question and left a big blank space below it. The professor did not read it, he just put a big check mark directly over it. After I got the homework back, I knew I should not work too hard on the last two assignments. I wrote some equations and copied circuits from the textbook and that was it. If only my paper for the class could be so easy . . . or is it?
If you do end up going to graduate school, make some friends in your program right away. You will probably learn more from them than your professors.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Fundamentals of Engineering Test: Pass
I learned I passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (or Engineer in Training) test. I am very pleased with myself.
I wrote a post in August about my preparation for the test and the material it covered.
I taught myself a lot of stuff I did not cover in a class. As a recap, it covered covered mathematics, probability & statistics, chemistry, computers, ethics & business practices, economics, mechanics (statics and dynamics), strength of materials, material properties, fluid mechanics, electricity & magnetism, and thermodynamics. Then there was an electrical engineering specific section in circuits, power, electromagnetics, control systems, communications, signal processing, electronics, digital systems, and computer systems. The night before the test I was up past 1. I was trying to learn things while responding to messages from my texting buddy before I got up around 4:30 for a 7am report time.
I took the test the last time it was administered on paper. Starting next month, it will be administered at computer testing centers on a rolling basis. I hate computer based tests, so I was glad I got it done on paper. I also got a fancy mechanical pencil as a souvenir.
Averaged over the last year, the test was administered 8,700 times in California and had a 56% passage rate. I was worried because I had not taken classes in most of the topics like the average engineer. However, I taught myself enough to do well. I filed a form with the State of California and mailed them a check. Now I am waiting for them to process it and send me a certificate.
Now I need to write a paper on finFETs, figure out how to program a boundary scan test in structural level hardware description language, write a report about it, do some user tests for my technical writing class, and write a report about the user tests. Then I just have to take 3 finals and I will be finished with the semester.
I wrote a post in August about my preparation for the test and the material it covered.
I taught myself a lot of stuff I did not cover in a class. As a recap, it covered covered mathematics, probability & statistics, chemistry, computers, ethics & business practices, economics, mechanics (statics and dynamics), strength of materials, material properties, fluid mechanics, electricity & magnetism, and thermodynamics. Then there was an electrical engineering specific section in circuits, power, electromagnetics, control systems, communications, signal processing, electronics, digital systems, and computer systems. The night before the test I was up past 1. I was trying to learn things while responding to messages from my texting buddy before I got up around 4:30 for a 7am report time.
I took the test the last time it was administered on paper. Starting next month, it will be administered at computer testing centers on a rolling basis. I hate computer based tests, so I was glad I got it done on paper. I also got a fancy mechanical pencil as a souvenir.
Averaged over the last year, the test was administered 8,700 times in California and had a 56% passage rate. I was worried because I had not taken classes in most of the topics like the average engineer. However, I taught myself enough to do well. I filed a form with the State of California and mailed them a check. Now I am waiting for them to process it and send me a certificate.
Now I need to write a paper on finFETs, figure out how to program a boundary scan test in structural level hardware description language, write a report about it, do some user tests for my technical writing class, and write a report about the user tests. Then I just have to take 3 finals and I will be finished with the semester.
Monday, December 2, 2013
The story of a paper
Recently someone texted me saying she was nervous about getting her paper back in class tomorrow. To make things easier, I will call her my texting buddy. I texted, "I have a great paper story to tell you. I will send it to you online, since it is too long to text."
Since this is a good story, I thought I might have made a post about it before. When my search turned up negative, I knew I had to make a post about it.
This happened toward the end of the fall my senior year at Berkeley, so it was 6 years ago. It was for Bronze Age Ancient Greek history. That was the official title, but the class really covered the Archaic through some of the Classical period. For my paper I chose to write about the people who rowed the Greek ships, the triremes. I also have a picture to share. Below are the books I used for writing this paper as well as my paper for Ancient Greek Religion.
I had a paper due on Monday. Actually, I had two major projects due that day. The other was either a 3D computer model for my Archeology of Pompeii and Herculaneum class or a paper on something for my Ancient Greek Religion class. While I could turn the essay in during class at 1pm, the professor said we could also turn it in to her box in the history office by 5 that afternoon. Since I was still working on the essay and her lectures were usually a complete waste of time, I skipped class.
As I was finished the term paper, I realized it was short on the length. It was supposed to be 10-15 pages. I put in some very long quotes, even if they had nothing to do with my main point. I double spaced the quotes, which you are not supposed to do. After I put the final touches on my essay, it was 8 pages long. It was almost 5, so I had to stop. I went to Derek's computer and printed out my essay. I could see from the green LEDs on Rohit's alarm clock it was 4:59 as it was printing out. Even after it finished printing, it would take me 10 minutes to get to Dwinelle, where the history department office was. As it was printing, Derek walked in the door. He asked me when it was due, and I told him 5 in the history office. Then he told me the history office closes at 4.
Since Derek is a history major, he knows these things. However, I did not know what I was going to do. I thought, my professor is very incompetent. Not only is she bad at lecturing and wastes class time asking students for their ill-informed input, but she doesn't even know when the office closes.
I stapled my essay and hurried to Dwinelle. I hoped the office would be open. By the time I got to the C floor of Dwinelle, I found the office; it was closed. I thought of sliding my essay under the door, but there was something blocking the threshold. I figured it was put there to stop students such as myself from sliding stuff under the door.
Not sure what to do, I decided to walk the halls of Dwinelle. I hoped to run into one of the graduate student readers for the class and give him my essay. While walking around, I remembered commiserating with Alex about the professor a few times. She had a class with the same professor who was terrible in her class as well. I remembered the class went from 5-6:30 in Mulford. I decided my best bet was to go to Mulford and try to catch the professor before that class ended. Before I went there, I decided to walk by the history office one more time on the off chance it was magically open. I walked by and to my amazement it was open! As I stepped inside I talked to a person who told me the office was closed. I politely asked if she could put my essay in the box for my professor. She said she would, but she had never heard of my professor. However, she found her box and I was very grateful. As I walked out of Dwinelle, I ran into Alex. Her class had ended early, so I told her about my paper adventure.
When I got back to my apartment, I decided to do something different. Instead of unlocking the door and walking in as I always did, I decided to enter through the window in the kitchen. My roommates and I had commented how easy it would be to enter the apartment if the window was open (or even if it was closed and locked), so I gave it a try. Except for avoiding knocking down the cans of food near the window, it was easy.
A week later I had a dream. In the dream I got my paper back. In red pen and circled was my score of 57%. When I woke up I was worried because I knew I deserved a failing grade. When I told my roommate Derek about the dream, he told me I must have been remembering it incorrectly. He said I had the numbers mixed up and actually had a 75%. I hoped he was right, but I knew the paper I wrote.
A few days later, the papers were handed back. I got a 75%! I was happily surprised. When I looked over the comments on the paper, there was something written next to one of the long quotes I put in. It asked, "What does this have to do with your point?" I thought, that is a good question.
I ended up getting a B in the class.
Since this is a good story, I thought I might have made a post about it before. When my search turned up negative, I knew I had to make a post about it.
This happened toward the end of the fall my senior year at Berkeley, so it was 6 years ago. It was for Bronze Age Ancient Greek history. That was the official title, but the class really covered the Archaic through some of the Classical period. For my paper I chose to write about the people who rowed the Greek ships, the triremes. I also have a picture to share. Below are the books I used for writing this paper as well as my paper for Ancient Greek Religion.
I had a paper due on Monday. Actually, I had two major projects due that day. The other was either a 3D computer model for my Archeology of Pompeii and Herculaneum class or a paper on something for my Ancient Greek Religion class. While I could turn the essay in during class at 1pm, the professor said we could also turn it in to her box in the history office by 5 that afternoon. Since I was still working on the essay and her lectures were usually a complete waste of time, I skipped class.
As I was finished the term paper, I realized it was short on the length. It was supposed to be 10-15 pages. I put in some very long quotes, even if they had nothing to do with my main point. I double spaced the quotes, which you are not supposed to do. After I put the final touches on my essay, it was 8 pages long. It was almost 5, so I had to stop. I went to Derek's computer and printed out my essay. I could see from the green LEDs on Rohit's alarm clock it was 4:59 as it was printing out. Even after it finished printing, it would take me 10 minutes to get to Dwinelle, where the history department office was. As it was printing, Derek walked in the door. He asked me when it was due, and I told him 5 in the history office. Then he told me the history office closes at 4.
Since Derek is a history major, he knows these things. However, I did not know what I was going to do. I thought, my professor is very incompetent. Not only is she bad at lecturing and wastes class time asking students for their ill-informed input, but she doesn't even know when the office closes.
I stapled my essay and hurried to Dwinelle. I hoped the office would be open. By the time I got to the C floor of Dwinelle, I found the office; it was closed. I thought of sliding my essay under the door, but there was something blocking the threshold. I figured it was put there to stop students such as myself from sliding stuff under the door.
Not sure what to do, I decided to walk the halls of Dwinelle. I hoped to run into one of the graduate student readers for the class and give him my essay. While walking around, I remembered commiserating with Alex about the professor a few times. She had a class with the same professor who was terrible in her class as well. I remembered the class went from 5-6:30 in Mulford. I decided my best bet was to go to Mulford and try to catch the professor before that class ended. Before I went there, I decided to walk by the history office one more time on the off chance it was magically open. I walked by and to my amazement it was open! As I stepped inside I talked to a person who told me the office was closed. I politely asked if she could put my essay in the box for my professor. She said she would, but she had never heard of my professor. However, she found her box and I was very grateful. As I walked out of Dwinelle, I ran into Alex. Her class had ended early, so I told her about my paper adventure.
When I got back to my apartment, I decided to do something different. Instead of unlocking the door and walking in as I always did, I decided to enter through the window in the kitchen. My roommates and I had commented how easy it would be to enter the apartment if the window was open (or even if it was closed and locked), so I gave it a try. Except for avoiding knocking down the cans of food near the window, it was easy.
A week later I had a dream. In the dream I got my paper back. In red pen and circled was my score of 57%. When I woke up I was worried because I knew I deserved a failing grade. When I told my roommate Derek about the dream, he told me I must have been remembering it incorrectly. He said I had the numbers mixed up and actually had a 75%. I hoped he was right, but I knew the paper I wrote.
A few days later, the papers were handed back. I got a 75%! I was happily surprised. When I looked over the comments on the paper, there was something written next to one of the long quotes I put in. It asked, "What does this have to do with your point?" I thought, that is a good question.
I ended up getting a B in the class.
Friday, November 29, 2013
The Old SQL and Little Saigon
Since Thanksgiving was yesterday, today is a big day for leftovers. Here is a post I wrote in June. It was almost finished when I first wrote it, but it never got published. Since it has some good links and the content is interesting, you might enjoy it.
On Thursday (June 13th) I got an email from my web host saying they were deactivating and deleting anything using version 4 of PHP and MySQL web programming languages. I have received several emails like this over the last few months, but this is one I did not ignore since it is was happening on Monday.
Now for a programming aside. SQL stands for structured query language. SQL is often used for things like an online store. The SQL database will have an entry for each item containing the item's name, description, price, link to a picture, and other assorted stuff. When a customer wants to search for an item by description or price, an SQL query will be generated that will search for certain values in the price or description field. If you know how to use it, an SQL database can do a bunch of stuff. PHP is a server side scripting language. One of its common uses is to interact with an SQL database so a user can access it.
The MySQL 4 database I had to save is for the California Patriot, the political magazine I wrote for in college. Their website and online presence never recovered from my graduation. See the website now for evidence of its infrequent updates. The website had a Wordpress blog as well, which is what I am most concerned with. It used to be a big part of my life; I made over 150 posts and spent countless hours looking for stories, taking pictures, and editing things until they were just right. The students who took over after me broke the blog nine months after I graduated. They asked me for help and I could not fix it. This made all of the archived posts inaccessible. The posts were still in the database, but they could not be accessed online. The blog has been down for over four years.
Most of what I know about blogs and their related programming comes from fixing things for the Patriot blog when I took over as online editor junior year. While I had some random knowledge from a JavaScript class and helping a neighbor set up a website, I was lost when trying to figure out the advanced stuff. My computer crashed many times. With the help of our good friend Google and everyone who posted helpful things online, I figured out how to get by most of the time. A few years ago I wrote a detailed account of My Blogging Backstory.
When I started working on the MySQL database on Thursday, I was surprised at how easy it was for me to do stuff. I was significantly better at figuring things out and getting things done than when I last looked at the site a few years ago. In recent times I must have become three times smarter or more clever.
The end result of all this is the restored blog is temporarily resurrected here. You can also just browse my posts from the beginning back in February of 2006. They were primarily written for an audience in Berkeley that followed some campus, local, and political happenings, but a few of them can be read and appreciated today. Many of my puns are just as good (or just as bad) today. Rereading what I wrote is exciting. My pictures, jokes, and memories of a different time are all great. I can even remember what was going on in my life when I made the posts and how people reacted to them.
Getting everything up and running took some work. Apparently copying and pasting over 8MB of text into a box on a website does not work well. Instead, I had to upload it as a file which then executed 1074 instructions.
Unfortunately some pictures from the Patriot blog were lost. I must have deleted them by accident in the mess of folders a few years ago. I would grab a backup of my posts or find the original pictures, but there were from fall 2006 to mid 2007. My hard drive died in May of 2007, a month before my annual backup of files.
Between the 161 posts I made for the Patriot blog, 11 more for an ancillary Patriot blog, and what I have done here (this is my 260th post) this is my 432th published post. (There were a handful of others, but they are unimportant.)
Because of my Patriot blog beginnings, I kept using the html tags for Wordpress blogs until a couple of weeks ago.
Party in Little Siagon
That was Thursday. On Saturday (June 15th) I helped my supervisor/friend/mentor (friendtor as Amanda says) set up a sound system. It was for an event celebrating the 25th anniversary of the declaration of Little Saigon. For those of you not in the know (or outside of Orange County), there are more Vietnamese people living in the cities of Westminster and Garden Grove and in the surrounding area that any other place outside of Vietnam. The event I helped with was at the Asian Garden Mall. It was mainly a showcase of cultural dances and singing. There were some comments from elected officials, but they were the standard self-promoting comments that are one reason I want nothing to do with politics. It was a big deal. Most of the stuff sounded great, but I would have liked it better if I understood Vietnamese. Around 90% of the things were in Vietnamese.
This video from the Orange County Register gives a good sense of the space we were at. Another video is also online. I am wearing a green short sleeve shirt and standing on the floor next to or behind the black speaker on the pole stand on stage right. I do an amazing job hiding my face. I apologize to everyone familiar with Orange County politicians; they were featured prominently in the videos. Just fast skip those parts and be glad you did not have to be there to see and hear them in person.
On Thursday (June 13th) I got an email from my web host saying they were deactivating and deleting anything using version 4 of PHP and MySQL web programming languages. I have received several emails like this over the last few months, but this is one I did not ignore since it is was happening on Monday.
Now for a programming aside. SQL stands for structured query language. SQL is often used for things like an online store. The SQL database will have an entry for each item containing the item's name, description, price, link to a picture, and other assorted stuff. When a customer wants to search for an item by description or price, an SQL query will be generated that will search for certain values in the price or description field. If you know how to use it, an SQL database can do a bunch of stuff. PHP is a server side scripting language. One of its common uses is to interact with an SQL database so a user can access it.
The MySQL 4 database I had to save is for the California Patriot, the political magazine I wrote for in college. Their website and online presence never recovered from my graduation. See the website now for evidence of its infrequent updates. The website had a Wordpress blog as well, which is what I am most concerned with. It used to be a big part of my life; I made over 150 posts and spent countless hours looking for stories, taking pictures, and editing things until they were just right. The students who took over after me broke the blog nine months after I graduated. They asked me for help and I could not fix it. This made all of the archived posts inaccessible. The posts were still in the database, but they could not be accessed online. The blog has been down for over four years.
Most of what I know about blogs and their related programming comes from fixing things for the Patriot blog when I took over as online editor junior year. While I had some random knowledge from a JavaScript class and helping a neighbor set up a website, I was lost when trying to figure out the advanced stuff. My computer crashed many times. With the help of our good friend Google and everyone who posted helpful things online, I figured out how to get by most of the time. A few years ago I wrote a detailed account of My Blogging Backstory.
When I started working on the MySQL database on Thursday, I was surprised at how easy it was for me to do stuff. I was significantly better at figuring things out and getting things done than when I last looked at the site a few years ago. In recent times I must have become three times smarter or more clever.
The end result of all this is the restored blog is temporarily resurrected here. You can also just browse my posts from the beginning back in February of 2006. They were primarily written for an audience in Berkeley that followed some campus, local, and political happenings, but a few of them can be read and appreciated today. Many of my puns are just as good (or just as bad) today. Rereading what I wrote is exciting. My pictures, jokes, and memories of a different time are all great. I can even remember what was going on in my life when I made the posts and how people reacted to them.
Getting everything up and running took some work. Apparently copying and pasting over 8MB of text into a box on a website does not work well. Instead, I had to upload it as a file which then executed 1074 instructions.
Unfortunately some pictures from the Patriot blog were lost. I must have deleted them by accident in the mess of folders a few years ago. I would grab a backup of my posts or find the original pictures, but there were from fall 2006 to mid 2007. My hard drive died in May of 2007, a month before my annual backup of files.
Between the 161 posts I made for the Patriot blog, 11 more for an ancillary Patriot blog, and what I have done here (this is my 260th post) this is my 432th published post. (There were a handful of others, but they are unimportant.)
Because of my Patriot blog beginnings, I kept using the html tags for Wordpress blogs until a couple of weeks ago.
Party in Little Siagon
That was Thursday. On Saturday (June 15th) I helped my supervisor/friend/mentor (friendtor as Amanda says) set up a sound system. It was for an event celebrating the 25th anniversary of the declaration of Little Saigon. For those of you not in the know (or outside of Orange County), there are more Vietnamese people living in the cities of Westminster and Garden Grove and in the surrounding area that any other place outside of Vietnam. The event I helped with was at the Asian Garden Mall. It was mainly a showcase of cultural dances and singing. There were some comments from elected officials, but they were the standard self-promoting comments that are one reason I want nothing to do with politics. It was a big deal. Most of the stuff sounded great, but I would have liked it better if I understood Vietnamese. Around 90% of the things were in Vietnamese.
This video from the Orange County Register gives a good sense of the space we were at. Another video is also online. I am wearing a green short sleeve shirt and standing on the floor next to or behind the black speaker on the pole stand on stage right. I do an amazing job hiding my face. I apologize to everyone familiar with Orange County politicians; they were featured prominently in the videos. Just fast skip those parts and be glad you did not have to be there to see and hear them in person.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
An Exciting Development
I do not want to pay attention to the lecture I am in, so I will write a blog post instead!
A lot of stuff has been happening. The most exciting thing, I met a girl.
I met her at a church event over the summer. Then I saw her again at a couple of Beach Newman meetings. One day last month, she got my phone number from a mutual friend and started texting me. In 24 hours, we had exchanged around 100 messages.
We like each other. There are too many examples from her text messages for me to list.
There are some very positive signs and some indications of possible problems. The problems being she does not have a driver’s license and does not have a definite plan to transfer out of community college. She is 21 years old. For over a month I have been saying we should go out and thrown out ideas, but she says she has family stuff to do. Until she spends time with me in person, this can’t move forward.
However, the positives are very positive. We have been averaging 50 text messages a day for the last few days. The subtext from all of them is she likes me and wants a relationship. Most importantly on my end, I am very excited by her. I can't get her out of my mind.
That is all I can think of to write. If you call me or message me I can explain more.
A lot of stuff has been happening. The most exciting thing, I met a girl.
I met her at a church event over the summer. Then I saw her again at a couple of Beach Newman meetings. One day last month, she got my phone number from a mutual friend and started texting me. In 24 hours, we had exchanged around 100 messages.
We like each other. There are too many examples from her text messages for me to list.
There are some very positive signs and some indications of possible problems. The problems being she does not have a driver’s license and does not have a definite plan to transfer out of community college. She is 21 years old. For over a month I have been saying we should go out and thrown out ideas, but she says she has family stuff to do. Until she spends time with me in person, this can’t move forward.
However, the positives are very positive. We have been averaging 50 text messages a day for the last few days. The subtext from all of them is she likes me and wants a relationship. Most importantly on my end, I am very excited by her. I can't get her out of my mind.
That is all I can think of to write. If you call me or message me I can explain more.
Monday, September 16, 2013
The Scoop on Classes
I have finished three weeks of classes at The Beach. I have a better idea what they are like.
Technical Communication
The professor works as a technical writer and wants to teach us useful things. Our first big assignment is writing a resume and cover letter for a real job posting. I am enjoying hearing and thinking about applying for jobs in a new way. What I was doing before in my job search was a clear failure. The professor is telling everyone they should get LinkedIn profiles. In this way I am ahead; I have a profile with 126 connections. The best part is one of my friends from Beach Newman is also in the class.
Our textbook is interesting; it was published in 1998. There are comments about this new thing called email and how search engines work. Did you know: If you search "basking shark" in AltaVista it returns 403 sites, while Yahoo only returns 2? If you search Google today, it has about 479,000 results. However, the book backs up almost every comment about what to do and not do in a resume or cover letter with results from surveys and research.
Very Large Scale Integration
This class is focused on programming for a FPGA circuit board. It is entirely hands on. There is no required textbook, only lab projects that need to be done and a final. However, the professor is not good at organizing the information he wants to present or providing help to get everyone started. He does not even have a syllabus. Getting the software running, the computer communicating with the board, and all the settings correct for a basic program is difficult. However, somehow I became friends with the one person in the class who has worked with this stuff before and he helped me get everything set up.
Advanced Math for Electrical Engineers
My friends warned me that the professor for this class was difficult. After the first day, I realized he was an old school type of teacher. He thinks students should learn a lot of little things and theoretical background to stuff, at the expense of doing simple calculations. While all the details are important, if they cannot be applied to basic situations, the knowledge is worthless. I have had many professors like this before, so I know how to handle things. However, I am in the minority. On the first day of class, there were around 25 students there. Two weeks later (after the drop deadline), I was one of five.
This brings up a tangent on my great teaching idea.
This covers the layout and design of integrated circuits on silicon. I am working with lengths that are on the order of 50 nanometers (around one millionth of a centimeter). For capacitance calculations, I am using the atto prefix, which is 10e-18. For added fun, there are multiple layers of this stuff on top of each other.
The professor has created a bad first impression. He is late to every class. Sometimes 9 or 10 minutes late, but on lab days he can be 30 or even 50 minutes late. He had not expressed any concern or worry; he thinks it is perfectly acceptable. He assigns homework that has very little to do with his lectures. Fortunately, the textbook is very good. I am learning a lot by reading it. Another good thing, the professor has mentioned we will be following the standards set at advanced places like the Lincoln Lab, UC Berkeley, and MOSIS.
The incompetence of tenured professors notwithstanding, I am very happy with my classes. Programming for a FPGA and laying out an integrated circuit on the transistor level seem like fun. Last week as I was reading about resistor layout on silicon wafers, I thought this is some good stuff and I am glad to be learning about it.
With all these classes and Beach Newman Week of Welcome events, things have been very busy. There is a lot of stuff I should be reading, working on, and doing. Since I have limited time (or questionable time management) I am following the motto "If it is not due, it is not getting done." As long as I get good at multivariable calculus theorems by the first midterm I will be OK. However, I am not trying to be OK, I am trying to be great.
Technical Communication
The professor works as a technical writer and wants to teach us useful things. Our first big assignment is writing a resume and cover letter for a real job posting. I am enjoying hearing and thinking about applying for jobs in a new way. What I was doing before in my job search was a clear failure. The professor is telling everyone they should get LinkedIn profiles. In this way I am ahead; I have a profile with 126 connections. The best part is one of my friends from Beach Newman is also in the class.
Our textbook is interesting; it was published in 1998. There are comments about this new thing called email and how search engines work. Did you know: If you search "basking shark" in AltaVista it returns 403 sites, while Yahoo only returns 2? If you search Google today, it has about 479,000 results. However, the book backs up almost every comment about what to do and not do in a resume or cover letter with results from surveys and research.
Very Large Scale Integration
This class is focused on programming for a FPGA circuit board. It is entirely hands on. There is no required textbook, only lab projects that need to be done and a final. However, the professor is not good at organizing the information he wants to present or providing help to get everyone started. He does not even have a syllabus. Getting the software running, the computer communicating with the board, and all the settings correct for a basic program is difficult. However, somehow I became friends with the one person in the class who has worked with this stuff before and he helped me get everything set up.
Advanced Math for Electrical Engineers
My friends warned me that the professor for this class was difficult. After the first day, I realized he was an old school type of teacher. He thinks students should learn a lot of little things and theoretical background to stuff, at the expense of doing simple calculations. While all the details are important, if they cannot be applied to basic situations, the knowledge is worthless. I have had many professors like this before, so I know how to handle things. However, I am in the minority. On the first day of class, there were around 25 students there. Two weeks later (after the drop deadline), I was one of five.
This brings up a tangent on my great teaching idea.
Everything needs a conceptual and practical component developed separately. I would spend the first part of my time explaining how stuff worked. There would be a select few equations; the goal is teaching everyone to visualize how things work. Then, I would work a few simple examples with real numbers. Next, I would cover stuff in mathematical detail. I would demonstrate key parts of important concepts. I would provide some general and specific examples. If things were in multiple dimensions, there would be at least one example of every concept in three dimensions. I get very annoyed when something is in only one dimension in examples and they expect me to figure out how multiple dimensions work. The homework would include simple problems with numbers and some more general ones without real values.Mixed Signal Integrated Circuit Design
This covers the layout and design of integrated circuits on silicon. I am working with lengths that are on the order of 50 nanometers (around one millionth of a centimeter). For capacitance calculations, I am using the atto prefix, which is 10e-18. For added fun, there are multiple layers of this stuff on top of each other.
The professor has created a bad first impression. He is late to every class. Sometimes 9 or 10 minutes late, but on lab days he can be 30 or even 50 minutes late. He had not expressed any concern or worry; he thinks it is perfectly acceptable. He assigns homework that has very little to do with his lectures. Fortunately, the textbook is very good. I am learning a lot by reading it. Another good thing, the professor has mentioned we will be following the standards set at advanced places like the Lincoln Lab, UC Berkeley, and MOSIS.
The incompetence of tenured professors notwithstanding, I am very happy with my classes. Programming for a FPGA and laying out an integrated circuit on the transistor level seem like fun. Last week as I was reading about resistor layout on silicon wafers, I thought this is some good stuff and I am glad to be learning about it.
With all these classes and Beach Newman Week of Welcome events, things have been very busy. There is a lot of stuff I should be reading, working on, and doing. Since I have limited time (or questionable time management) I am following the motto "If it is not due, it is not getting done." As long as I get good at multivariable calculus theorems by the first midterm I will be OK. However, I am not trying to be OK, I am trying to be great.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Labor Day Weekend
There is always something exciting going on with me.
On Thursday night I bought some new running shoes. Well, they are my first pair of running specific shoes. In the last few weeks I have been exercising a lot. My goal is to run or bike 5 days a week. It should be known, I do not like running. However, I dislike being out of shape and how I look even more than I do not like running.
Friday morning I tried my new shoes. They felt a lot better than the old ones. Later on I went to the library and practiced for the Fundamentals of Engineering Test. I practiced electrical circuits, which I am not as good at as I should be. Then I saw Frank and company. This is the first time I saw Frank and Sabrina since their wedding a month ago. We saw Wolverine and then ate at Karl Strauss.
On Saturday I went to an apartment warming party. It was themed as a tea party with scones and tea sandwiches. Everything was good, despite being vegan and gluten free. I brought my teapot, which I bought in Berkeley for tea parties. After the tea, we played Double Take, which is a game I do not recommend. It is like charades, except two people are acting out different parts of a compound word or phrase. For example, the phrase could be tub of lard (an actual one we came across). One person would act out tub and the other would do lard. Some of the words were stupid. For the category of things relating to cars, one person had to act out "bump" while the other person mimed "her." I was horrible at the game. At the end, there was this exchange:
Score Keeper: "Chris, you got 28 points, so you tied for third place."
Me: "What is the nice way to say this? Did you count correctly?" She recounted.
Score Keeper: "Actually, you got 20 points." This put me in last out of 8 people.
After that, I went to watch the California Golden Bears open their football season. I was at a viewing party with the Orange County Cal Alumni Club. We had a new head coach and a true freshman quarterback. It was an exciting game to watch. It was tied near the start of the fourth quarter. However, our top 25 opponent Northwestern won in the end. While it was a loss, the Bears looked great. There is a lot of potential and the team should only get better.
On Sunday Eric organized a BBQ with the Vietnamese Crew. It was in a park and I did the grilling. Consuming two hamburgers, three beers, a hot dog, and some chips was wonderful. After that, I went to Ryan's for another BBQ. While I was plenty full from earlier, I enjoyed many of the beers he had. Aside from Dave, it was all people Ryan knew.
On the Labor Day Holiday, I cleared a space in my room to set up my laptop. I had to download a program for class to program a circuit board. The program I downloaded was big. It had to be downloaded in four different parts; each was around 2GB. After the downloading and decompression, it took an hour for the program itself to install. After I figured out the license, I started working through a tutorial online. Then there was laundry and some reading. I registered and paid for the FE test in October.
On Thursday night I bought some new running shoes. Well, they are my first pair of running specific shoes. In the last few weeks I have been exercising a lot. My goal is to run or bike 5 days a week. It should be known, I do not like running. However, I dislike being out of shape and how I look even more than I do not like running.
Friday morning I tried my new shoes. They felt a lot better than the old ones. Later on I went to the library and practiced for the Fundamentals of Engineering Test. I practiced electrical circuits, which I am not as good at as I should be. Then I saw Frank and company. This is the first time I saw Frank and Sabrina since their wedding a month ago. We saw Wolverine and then ate at Karl Strauss.
On Saturday I went to an apartment warming party. It was themed as a tea party with scones and tea sandwiches. Everything was good, despite being vegan and gluten free. I brought my teapot, which I bought in Berkeley for tea parties. After the tea, we played Double Take, which is a game I do not recommend. It is like charades, except two people are acting out different parts of a compound word or phrase. For example, the phrase could be tub of lard (an actual one we came across). One person would act out tub and the other would do lard. Some of the words were stupid. For the category of things relating to cars, one person had to act out "bump" while the other person mimed "her." I was horrible at the game. At the end, there was this exchange:
Score Keeper: "Chris, you got 28 points, so you tied for third place."
Me: "What is the nice way to say this? Did you count correctly?" She recounted.
Score Keeper: "Actually, you got 20 points." This put me in last out of 8 people.
After that, I went to watch the California Golden Bears open their football season. I was at a viewing party with the Orange County Cal Alumni Club. We had a new head coach and a true freshman quarterback. It was an exciting game to watch. It was tied near the start of the fourth quarter. However, our top 25 opponent Northwestern won in the end. While it was a loss, the Bears looked great. There is a lot of potential and the team should only get better.
On Sunday Eric organized a BBQ with the Vietnamese Crew. It was in a park and I did the grilling. Consuming two hamburgers, three beers, a hot dog, and some chips was wonderful. After that, I went to Ryan's for another BBQ. While I was plenty full from earlier, I enjoyed many of the beers he had. Aside from Dave, it was all people Ryan knew.
On the Labor Day Holiday, I cleared a space in my room to set up my laptop. I had to download a program for class to program a circuit board. The program I downloaded was big. It had to be downloaded in four different parts; each was around 2GB. After the downloading and decompression, it took an hour for the program itself to install. After I figured out the license, I started working through a tutorial online. Then there was laundry and some reading. I registered and paid for the FE test in October.
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