Living the Life

I am happy with the way a lot of things are going. I have been busy doing great things. This is my spring break, so I am getting caught up on things. I watched the last couple of episodes of Justified which I enjoyed a lot.

Classes
I am taking three classes this semester.

• Microelectronics covers how CMOS circuits work. It is a lot of basic electronics stuff. Everyone in the class has covered it before in their electrical engineering coursework, except for me. However, I worked hard and earned the highest grade in the class on the first midterm.
• RF and Microwave Electronics uses wave equations and is more confusing than the other classes. We learned how to use a Smith Chart, which is a great way to estimate how to build an impedance matching network. There are also labs where we simulate radio circuits. I did very well on the midterm and have received perfect grades on my labs, even though my friends seem to be doing better work.
• Microfabrication and Nanotechnology is my favorite class this semester. It explains how to manufacture integrated circuits. It covers the process of cleaning silicon wafers, growing silicon dioxide, using photolithograpic masks, building nanostructures, ion implantation, etc. The math is very simple; it is all algebra. The hardest part is memorizing a lot of terms, processes, and chemical formula. However, someone (me) is very good at that.

I was not able to start my masters project this semester. However, I have an idea and a professor I want to work with. That will be the only class I am taking in the fall. I would like to take something else, but they are not offering anything else I really want to take :(

Weekend Stuff
It seems every weekend is busy. Last weekend I was in the desert to work on the relay race for my volunteer job. My part of it went well, but there were some serious problems caused by putting everything off to the last minute by many key people. Before that, I saw Terrance and Erin who were in town and celebrated St. Patrick's Day with Ryan and company.

Spiritual Exercises
In January I started attending a program on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola at a local church. A few of my friends from Beach Newman are taking them there as well. I meet with my friends every week to talk about them. Doing all of the daily meditations and contemplations takes a lot of time. However, I like how it is forcing me to order my time better. I am getting up early every day, going to mass, and completing the stuff. They are having a great effect on me.

Beach Newman
Related to this is how things with the Catholic club at Long Beach are going. There are a few people who live on campus who generously swipe people into the dinning hall. Last week I had dinner there on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This is us having dinner last week.

I see these people a lot. On Monday I meet for dinner with three of my friends who are doing the Spiritual Exercises, on Wednesday we have our normal meeting and prayer group, and on Thursday we have Bible study, where I end up answering a lot of people's questions. Apparently I know a lot.

We had a big pro-life event last week. I was prepared for a negative backlash, but a lot of people were positive and civil when talking to us. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a normal Berkeley response I was preparing for, it was a 3.

I have been involved with the leadership of a lot of student clubs in the past. From this, I have developed a sense of who will make a good leader for a group, sometimes months before the person realizes it. I have realized I am the person who will be leading club next year, unless I step back. There is only one other person who I think would be interested in the job, but he has been a bad officer in the club. A lot of people do not even know who he is. From my experience at Berkeley, I know exactly what needs to be done in the club. I have brought in some great ideas so far, and people realize everything I say is right on. I will also have a lot of time on my hands only working on my project.

Rest of Spring Break
On Wednesday I will be going for a local hike, as long as the rain does not muddy things. On Thursday I will be driving up to Berkeley for some alumni events which will be a lot of fun. I get to see people I have not seen in almost a year, plus a few I saw last month.

I am living the life and enjoying it!

Busy things

I just started am email to someone to explain a lot of things that have been going on recently. I decided, this should be a blog post instead.

A doctor has been treating my mom for pressure sores (open wounds on the skin from too much pressure on a point) for several months. While he had always said surgery was an option he was trying less invasive treatments first. A couple of weeks ago my mom went to another doctor who is treating her for a fever she has had on and off for a while. The doctor said she had a bone infection and needs intravenous antibiotics every day for the next several months. However, he refused to start treatment until her pressure sores were closed. So, the other doctor proceeded with surgery. After 10 days in the hospital, my mom came home. However, the recovery will take a long time, at least two months. She is in a hospital bed with a special mattress and can do almost nothing for the next few weeks.

Classes at The Beach started back up last week. I still need to figure out what project I am going to do and what professor to work with. Right now I am in three classes that look interesting. I am blessed to have gotten the classes I want, since most of the people I know were unable to get into the classes they wanted.

Now for something fun. Before classes started, I went to Lake Arrowhead for a weekend with some people from Beach Newman. We did exciting things like played hide and seek in a cabin with all the lights off and scary music playing.

About the Missions

A week ago I finished reading Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions by James A. Sandos. I liked it.

I picked up this book because I wanted to learn more about the missions and early California history. Unlike many people I know, I did not write a mission report when I was in fourth grade. I went to school in Ohio, so I learned about the native peoples of Ohio and some early settlement around the French and Indian War. Instead of building a mission, I created a brochure that highlighted some Ohio tribes for a tourist back in the day.

As explained in the introduction, several studies of early California history view the Spanish missions as either the greatest or the worst thing to ever happen to California and the native people. Converting California looks for the truth which is somewhere in the middle. I will highlight a few things I found interesting.

The big initial reason for the sudden expansion into California was to secure the coastline for Spain against other powers, such as Russia.

There was conflict between how the Spanish military and the Franciscan friars wanted to treat the native peoples. Then among both groups, there was a variety of individual attitudes toward native peoples. There were some amazing friars and soldiers, but there were also some who shamelessly exploited the native inhabitants.

The missions and presidios brought the native peoples a common language. This allowed different tribes to communicate with each other in common goals, like plotting against the Spanish.

Fr. Serra was a good guy. He believed that he was saving the souls of native people by bringing Christ to them. Everything he did was to advance this goal. His personal actions imitated Christ. Before he went to Alta California, Fr. Serra said that if he is killed by the native people that they should be forgiven. When one of his brother friars was brutally killed, he urged mercy and forgiveness for the murders.

Native people who lived as part of the missions had a shorter lifespan than those who remained in their normal dwelling places. The friars were aware of this, but did not have a ready explanation. Diseases such as syphilis were easily transmitted. In the late Eighteenth Century, the germ theory of disease was not known. Common procedures like tattooing and medical treatments of the day including scaring skin transferred blood between people. I learned syphilis was present in the new world before European contact, but was then spread around by Europeans.

A Documentary
After I read the book, I watched Serra: Ever Forward, Never Back, which aired on EWTN in November. The docudrama was nothing great, but it complemented the book nicely. It focused on the parts of Fr. Serra's life the book did not. It also included some footage of where Serra grew up on the island of Majorca, Spain and where he was a missionary in Mexico. Some more information about the program, which was filmed in California, is also online.

Nov 24, 2013 was the 300 anniversary of Fr. Serra's birth. He is beatified, so he is one step away from becoming an official saint.

Weekend Excitement: Hollywood Sign, Beer, Quantum Mechanics

Last weekend was fun. I will start with Sunday, since it has a picture to go with it.

Hiking in Hollywood
On Sunday I went for a hike with some other people from Beach Newman. We went to Griffith Park near the Hollywood Sign. It was fun.

Below are the directions of how we hiked. Material in brackets is stuff I deduced from Google Maps after the fact or heard from people, but did not personally check out. Investigate more before you take anything in brackets seriously.

To get to the parking lot, take the Gower exit off of the 101, go north to make an immediate right on Franklin. Then make a left on Canyon Drive (a small street after a couple of lights) and follow it to the park. It looks like the address of 3200 Canyon Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068 will get you there. Parking there was tight. It was mostly parallel parking on the street or a dirt lot. I found a spot in the lot because I was willing to dive all the way to a small space at the end. Getting out was harder. If it was not for the help of several people there directing me I would have steered my tire off the curb and had a costly and horrible day.

For the hike itself, start by continuing on the road (Canyon Dr) from where you parked. There will be a place where people skateboard on the right. Keep following the road. [Google Maps shows there are paths that go left or straight as the road bends right. These might be alternate routes.] Keep following that, and it will take up into the hills. After the road has climbed in elevation, there will be another dirt road that veers off to the right. [It looks like that will take you to Griffith Observatory.] If you want the Hollywood Sign, stay left. Since the Hollywood Sign is visible earlier in the hike, it should be easy to make this turn. A little further on, there will be a path that goes left and descends the hill. This will take you toward the horse stables. Instead of that, stay right for the Hollywood.

Eventually, the trail will dump you onto a paved road. We went left which will take you to a good, but not close view of the front of the sign. [If you take a right, the road will bring you to the back of the Hollywood Sign.] The picture below was actually taken on private property we were not supposed to be on (though many people were on it). However, we took a small shortcut and bypassed that sign completely. [It looks like the private road dead ends without a better view.]



There is space next to me so we can photoshop in the other two people who ran away before we took a picture. We went back the same way, which made for a 5.4 mile round trip. On the way back we had pizza at Fresh Brothers. We enjoyed their Hawian Style and Old School (meatballs layered with pepperoni and smothered with spicy Giardiniera) pizzas.

Quantum Mechanics
On Saturday I meet one of my friends from Beach Newman. When I last saw this friend (his name is Chris), I told him one of my goals for Christmas vacation was reading a book on quantum mechanics. He thought, it would be great if he could read it too and we could discuss it. We are reading Volume III of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. They are freely available online and designed to be easily read on any device. Chris is reading them on his phone.

We talked about the first three chapters of it on Saturday. While I took two semesters of quantum mechanics as part of my physics education, I did not understand things as well as I wanted to. I did not have a conceptual basis of what was going on that could help me figure things out. So far I am enjoying the reading a lot.

Some Beer
After that, I went to Ryan's house to celebrate his birthday. Since he is a fan of pale ales and Stone Brewing Company, I brought him some Goose Island Ten Hills Pale Ale and Stone Levitation Ale. I liked the Ten Hills, but the Levitation was not as good as I remember other Stone products being.



In case you cannot tell, we are playing Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64. Ryan got it for Christmas. I have never liked playing games on it because everyone is significantly better than me. I never had a gaming console growing up (I never wanted one), which might explain some things about me.

Drinks on Fridays

The Friday after Thanksgiving I saw Sidney. It was the third year in a row I saw him the day after Thanksgiving. Even though he now resides in Reno, it was the second time I saw him in November.

We went to The Bruery in Placentia. They have a lot of sour beers. While that is great for people like Sidney who enjoy them, I did not like them.

These are the beers I had in my flight with my comments:

Loakal Red - Oak-aged American red ale (good, but not great)
Bryeian - hoppy cascadian dary rye ale (good, not great)
Oude Tart - Flemish style red (No)
Humulus Wet: Centennial - fresh hopped pale ale (nothing special)
6 Geese-a-laying - spiced dark ale with gooseberries (OK for a holiday brew)

I also had another beer. I do not remember the name, it was an Ebony & (something).

After enjoying the beers there, we went to Hopscotch in Fullerton. I enjoyed a duroc pork butt with apples, pickled red onion, garlic, and roasted root vegetables. I had a Dudes' Grandma's Pecan brown ale to go with it. I liked the ale, while I usually avoid brown ales.

Then we went to The Night Owl Cafe.

Music and more
A week later on Friday I was at StillWater in Dana Point. I was there to watch my friend who sings and plays modern blues music. When he texted me about the show at 2 that afternoon, I was not planning on going. Finals were the following week, and I had a programming project, two lab reports, and a research paper all due on Tuesday. However, my friend Romeo said he was going, so I decided to go as well. I did not want him to drive the 45 minutes down to Dana Point and watch the show by himself. Also, Romeo is my new best friend. I met him in the spring at Beach Newman and saw him at a few meetings. Then he was in my technical writing class this semester. Many of the Mondays I saw him in class I had just seen him that weekend.

While I was at StillWater, I had a one of their cocktails, a Bulleit creek tea. It was Bulleit bourbon with lemon, Angostura bitters, and some other stuff. It was on their menu, but must be too secret to put on their website. I would not order it again, so it is no big loss. I was only planning on staying there to watch my friend, who started playing at 8:30. However, the performer after him was really good, so we stuck around past midnight. Since I was around for a while, I enjoyed a Trestles IPA from the Left Coast Brewing Company.

This Friday Frank and Sabrina are having a Sinterklaas party. If it were not for my Advanced Math for Electrical Engineers final today things would be great.

Adventures in Graduate School

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Secret History and Free Books

I just finished reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It was good.

I first heard about this book from the graduate student instructor for my Ancient Religion class at Berkeley. He said it was the reason he became interested in classics. Since he was working on a graduate classics degree at Berkeley, it must have been a pretty good inspiration. However, when I had time to find and read the book after the semester, I forgot the title. I tried searching online using a few words of what I remembered from the plot, but they were too vague.

Fast forward five years to last month when I was a groomsman at the wedding of my friend Frank. I was sitting next to his friend from the University of Chicago. This person studied Byzantine history, which is interesting to me. He wrote his thesis about the Secret History, a work by Procopius from around 550 AD. In this work, Procopius gives a scathing critique of the Emperor Justinian and his associates. For his thesis, this person analyzed if the Secret History was based on facts or a made up propaganda piece. He was from San Mateo, so I asked him if knew Monica (a friend from Berkeley), and he did. They went to the same high school.

When I got home, I was interested in looking into the Secret History of Procopius. I googled the secret history, and the first thing I found was a novel by Donna Tartt. I took a quick look at the summary and realized this was the book I had forgotten the title to.

Now for the novel The Secret History. It follows a group of classics students in a small college in Vermont. The books opens with the narrator saying he and his friends killed someone. He then explains the events and people years earlier who brought his life to that point. It centers around a group of odd students who study Greek and revive worship of the ancient Greek god Dionysus.

The book was published in 1992 and the main action is retold years after the fact, which would put the book happening in the early eighties or earlier. All of it is from another era. There are things I can relate to, but it is also decades away. For example, dorms had one phone for the entire building. If you wanted to get a hold of someone, you had to call the building where he lived. If he was not there, you left a message with whoever answered the phone.

I enjoyed all of the ancient history and classical references. Everything from direct quotes of works, to mentions of ancient Greek drama, to allusions to Greek heroes, to a character comparing a teacher to Richmond Lattimore. It is unfortunate a lot of readers will not enjoy those comments.

While I liked a lot of the book, a couple of things in the book were unnecessary. I will not go into details since that would compromise the story. I also had an idea to prevent the murder that did not occur to any of the characters.

I have imagined what it would be like if I attended a small liberal arts college. It would be nice to live in and use buildings that had a lot of history and to live on a small campus where the seasons could be experienced. However, I would also be disappointed. There would be so few choices for classes and most of them would be taught by the same few professors. Their idea of a science class would look like a bunch of people playing with over sized kids' chemistry sets. I would think, I shelled out $30,000 a year for this place? Plus, they wouldn't even have an element on the periodic table named after them.

Free Books
My friend James is moving to the east coast to start law school at Harvard. To downsize his book collection, he posted a list of books on facebook he was giving away for free to a good home.

I got three books from James. They are:

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea by Jasper Becker
Military Leaders in the Civil War by Joseph B. Mitchell

I am thankful for all of these books.

The first book was one he got as a gift from a former roommate of mine. The second was one of his several books on Korea. I know almost nothing about Korea and I want to change that. The third book was one James thought I would enjoy. It is short sketches of ten military leaders of the Civil War. It is a character study that analyzes what personality traits, strategies, or themes lead to their successes or failures. It looks interesting, so I think James was right in thinking I would like it.

Now the biggest problem of all, setting aside time to read all of these books. To inspire myself to work harder, I am starting with the Theodore Roosevelt book. I am taking the book with me to school and reading it in the library when I have some time. I am aiming for a chapter a day.

I'm a Real Student! plus the FE Exam

On Monday I will start as a full time graduate student. I am excited!

I feel like I am starting college over and I want to avoid every mistake and regret I had the first time. I am half way there already with the classes I have taken so far. I have made some friends in class and gotten to know a professor or two. I have gone out with two girls who were awesome, even if they did not feel the same about me in the end. Last night I celebrated the birthday of a friend from Long Beach. After some silly string, Irish car bombs, four different bars, and Denny's, I headed home around 4.

Three of my four textbooks have already arrived in the mail. Some of them are a little intimidating, but I know if I practice a lot, read and reread them early in the semester, and ask questions when I do not know what I am doing I will do great. I have mostly evening classes starting at 5:30, 6:30, or later. I have one afternoon class on Tuesdays at 12:30. I have no classes on Wednesday or Friday. However, almost no one at Long Beach has class on Friday. I am taking four classes this semester: Technical Communication (an English class that will mostly be a waste of time), Advanced Engineering Math for Electrical Engineers (it covers everything I am not good at: Fourier transforms, Z–transforms, and differential equations), VLSI Design (Very Large System Integration, which is putting one thousand plus transistors into a single integrated circuit), and Mixed Single Integrated Circuit Design.

In the Catholic club, I have established myself as the person who knows what is going on and how to do things. When I make suggestions people usually agree with me. It also helps that I know from experience what ideas work. Unfortunately, there is a ridiculous amount of red tape. CSU Long Beach makes life difficult for student groups. Faculty advisers, signed paper forms, mandatory in person officer training sessions that do not start until August, a stupid online network few people use that every campus group must use, paying for a table at the big club fair, a block on clubs reserving rooms, shutting down the one webpage people have used to find our club, and writing a club constitution that must contain paragraphs with exact wording copied from campus and state law are not helping anyone. This is a load of bullshit.

Things are looking up, and I am excited!

Fundamentals of Engineering Test
In other news, I am preparing to take the Fundamentals of Engineering (or Engineer in Training) test in October. It is the first step in becoming a licensed professional engineer. While it is only necessary for a small fraction of engineering jobs, I think passing the test will be a boost when I apply for internships and jobs. The test has 180 multiple choice questions. Half of it is general engineering knowledge. It tests physics, math, statics, dynamics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, probability, chemistry, computers, engineering economics, properties of materials, electricity and magnetism, and ethics. I am working through a review book, though I am learning some things for the first time. I never took engineering economics (present value, future value, depreciation, cost benefit analysis, and all that stuff) and have very little exposure to some other areas, like fluid dynamics, properties of materials, and probability/statistics. I took chemistry, but that was in high school. The second half of the test covers my area of specialty, electrical engineering. There will be circuits, electronics, power, control systems, and more circuits; all of which I took in the last couple of years. Here is the detailed list of what is covered on the test.

I bought one of the approved models of calculator (TI-36X Pro) for the test and have been practicing with it. For the last 11 years, I have exclusively used my TI-83+ Silver Edition for everything. There are a few changes in buttons I am getting used to. Aside from the calculator, I am learning how the handbook I can use for the test is laid out. It is 250 pages and has most of the equations I will need. However, I need to know where to find things and what equations are not in it. There are also tricks I am developing. For example, I could memorize some equation and a constant for a speed of sound equation to determine Mach numbers, but it is so much easier to remember sound travels at 343.2 m/s at 20 C.

I am finished reviewing/learning around two thirds of the general topics. There are some areas like fluid mechanics that I understand better now that I ever have. For engineering economics, it is mostly figuring out the right equation to use and plugging the numbers in. The hardest section for me has been statics. It is about forces in things that are at rest, like how much force is in a beam in a bridge. The next hardest section for me looks like chemistry, because it expects me to memorize a lot of chemical formulas and oxidation reduction stuff. If I was Walter White, this would be easier. Fortunately, that is only a small part of the chemistry section, which is a small part, 9%, of the entire general section of the test. I still remember some important elemental symbols and atomic masses from high school, and all the calculations are basic algebra. If those are my biggest problems, I am in great shape for the general section.

Solving the problems quickly and time management will be the most difficult part of the test.

For the last testing session in April, the overall passage rate was 61% (though first-time test takers had a passage rate around 75%). For comparison, the California bar exam in July of last year had overall and first-time passage rates of 55% and 68%. However, people who took the engineering test did substantially less complaining. I have not seen a single facebook post about "I am taking the Engineering FE/EIT test." In contrast, I have seen way too many posts about bar prep classes, studying for the bar, and taking the bar. Alternatively, this could mean I have made horrible life choices by associating with too many lawyers and not enough engineers.

Something great every day

I have been busy. In the last couple of weeks, I have been doing something interesting almost every day. Instead of trying for long posts that capture every nuance, I will throw everything at you.

Before this story starts, a few notable things happened at the end of June. I was in a three car auto accident that resulted in no damage to anything. People were merging because construction closed a lane, but there was only 100 feet between the first cone and the complete closure of the lane. Everyone stopped and exchanged information, but the bumpers did their job!

Eric locked his keys in his car. I used my AAA membership to get it opened for him. This was around midnight after we saw Now you see Me and had In-N-Out.

Then I went to Las Vegas for Frank's bachelor party. I saw all the same people again a few days later for Independence Day. Ryan had a BBQ at his new house.

Then this jumps to the 9th of July.

Tuesday: Beach Newman meeting, young adult meeting at Long Beach church
Wednesday: Board meeting of OC Cal Alumni Club
Thursday: Happy Hour with OC Cal Alumni in Corona del Mar
Friday: Nothing (worked on fundamentals of engineering test practice problems)
Saturday: Cleaned my room, saw friend in modern blues band perform in Dana Point

Sunday: Spent the day with Frank and the groomsmen; got fitted for a tuxedo, had lunch, saw Pacific Rim, saw Frank's new apartment, went to the OC Fair, enjoyed a Krispy Kream sloppy joe sandwich
Monday: Happy hour with Long Beach friend
Tuesday: Beach Newman meeting, saw Corpse Bride, had cake from friends' wedding (a year after the wedding)
Wednesday: Went hiking at Sturtevant Falls with Long Beach friend (from happy hour)
Thursday: Nothing (show of my musician friend was cancelled at last minute)
Friday: Baby shower for Long Beach friend (same one as wedding cake), saw Angels game with Dave (including an Angels win!)
Saturday: Beach Newman officer retreat, camping in someone's backyard, Twinkies!, spending the night in a tent without a rain fly, experiencing rain, gave a great talk

Sunday: Finished up retreat, syrup shots at Denny's, went to Slater's 50/50 with Ryan, Dave, and Daniel for my birthday
Monday: Went to Lucille's BBQ for my birthday
Tuesday: Responded to all my birthday messages, Theology on Tap with Beach Newman friends
Wednesday: Hike in Peter's Canyon with Dave and Long Beach friend, tested new hydration pack

All of the things I did above were awesome. I have been getting back into the habit of exercising. I bike almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, except for the days I am hiking. I have gotten back up to going 12 miles in a ride. I am watching Sons of Anarchy on Amazon Prime. I just finished season three. If you have not watched Sons of Anarchy, you are missing out on a great show.

Now what I have planned for the next few days.

Thursday: Pick up tuxedo for wedding, pack and get everything ready
Friday: Drive to Santa Barbara with Dave and Aden, rehearsal dinner
Saturday: Frank's wedding, me standing around in a tuxedo looking important

Tuesday: Theology on Tap with Beach Newman friends
Wednesday: Help friends move
Thursday: Hike somewhere, maybe Santiago peak

There are a lot of things around me I want to change. Living with family can still be horrible. However, I am doing a lot to make the best of my situation. I am happy about the way a lot of things are going.

St. Therese of Lisieux and Vatican II

A few weeks ago I finished The Story of a Soul, the autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux.

It was not as good as I had hoped. There was a lot of stuff about Therese growing up. She would have been a handful to deal with. The littlest things set her off. She also does not take no for an answer. She knew she wanted to join the Carmel cloister when she was young. When she made her intention known at the age of 14, the priest-superior of the order said she was too young. Then she went to the bishop to ask his permission. When he said the same thing, she traveled to Rome and appealed to Pope Leo XIII. He told her to do what her superiors instructed, which was wait until she was older.

What I do like about St. Therese (which I knew about before reading this), was her idea on small acts of kindness. When we cannot do great things, we can do small things with great love. She is often called Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (the names she took as a religious) or the Little Flower of Jesus. She died in 1897 at the age of 24. However, she is a Doctor of the Church, which means she is really important (only 35 in 2,000 years). She is not to be confused with St. Teresa of Avila, another Doctor of the Church who reformed the Carmelite Order and wrote The Interior Castle in the 1500s.

Seeing posts online, some of my friends like St. Therese of Lisieux and her writings a lot. Mother Teresa of Calcutta took her name after Therese of Lisieux.

One remarkable thing is the piety of Therese's family. Both of her parents have been declared to be blessed. All four of her sisters that survived to adulthood became nuns.

Reading this was a continuation of the reading club/discussion group/salvation Skypes/Catholic conversations (we do not have a good name) I started with Amanda last year to read the Bible.

Vatican II
The other thing we read earlier this year was all of the documents from the Second Vatican Council. All the Vatican II documents are available online in a variety of languages, including Byelorussian and Swahili.

There were no great revelations in the documents for me. A lot of it was stuff I had heard before. I was disappointed in a few of the documents. They had a lot of general comments. Often they said a particular issue needed to be addressed and said bishops should appoint a group to study a problem and recommend changes. This was boring, because I wanted to read about the changes themselves. However, people say it was a really important council and a lot of stuff came out of it, like the mass being in local languages instead of Latin.

If you are interested in reading a few of the documents, I would recommend you read the constitutions. They were the best and most important.

Vatican II took place from 1962-1965, so last year was the 50th anniversary of when it started. To celebrate this, the Pope declared a celebration called the Year of Faith. People are encouraged to read the Vatican II documents as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church and gain a deeper understanding of their faith.

A Great Update!

I received a few emails this week. I have been accepted to the masters in electrical engineering program at Long Beach.

First, I got an email saying "Thank you for choosing 'The Beach'" which contained instructions on how to register for classes. Next, I looked online and it seemed I had already accepted the offer of admission I was never offered and was listed as a masters student. Then, I got another email today with an official acceptance letter.

My professor came through. He got my application reconsidered and had me admitted. He must have been pleased with my performance in the class I took from him in the fall and the one I finished last month (despite my disaster of a presentation).

This is exciting! I feel like I am on track to do something great.

I remember how horrible I felt two years ago. I felt I was wasting my life. I can remember sitting in a park in San Francisco with my Associate two years ago, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. After talking with him and thinking about the life I wanted, I knew I had to make some changes.

A month later I started taking a control systems class at UCI during the summer. I was still unsure if I wanted to do electrical or mechanical engineering. However, my jovial professor and the ways I saw electricity interact with motors convinced me electrical engineering was were it was at. Then I decided to take more electrical engineering classes at Long Beach. My plan was to continue to investigate electrical engineering and Long Beach as a school while raising my GPA for graduate school. After two semesters and five classes, my GPA was above their minimum. However, by the time I got my grades in May they had closed applications for the fall. Disappointed, I planned to apply for the spring semester. I took one class in the fall, with the intention of getting to know the professor who was the graduate adviser for the program, who I wanted to impress. While I got off to a slow start, I finished the class strong. Then, I discovered they were not accepting applications for the spring semester. None of the Cal States were, citing budget cuts. So I took one more class in the spring. However, the class was only one day a week. Most of the time I forgot about it the other six days. I did not put the time and effort into the homework, midterm, or final project that I should have.

Now I am happy. The work I have been doing the past two years was to get into graduate school. Now I am in.

I want to start things anew. I expect it will take two years for me to finish a masters degree and I want to be the kind of student I never was. I want to do very well in all of my classes, I want to be aggressive about getting to know professors, and I want to get to know some of the people in my classes. I want to avoid all the mistakes I made before. I am already on track to do all of this.

I have ideas about how I want to remake my life, and it looks like they are within reach.

Hiro Protagonist in Snow Crash

On Wednesday I finished the book Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It was great.

The story of why I read this book starts in April. I was going to Fresno for Juliette's wedding. I was carpooling with Justin, who was driving up from San Diego. I do not know Justin very well, his first semester at Berkeley was my last. However, we know a lot of the same people (53 mutual friends according to facebook) and were involved in similar activities. He explained the book and I was interested in reading it.

The main character, aptly named Hiro Protagonist, is a hacker and a great swordsman. His business card from the book is below. His dad was in the army when he was growing up (like me) and he graduated from Berkeley (like me). He mentioned meeting another character in his freshman physics lab section.



I enjoyed the universe Stephenson created. It had a slight dystopian feel. Everything is owned by a franchise of a massive corporation. Some things that are easy for us to imagine today would have been more fanciful when the book was published in 1992. For example, in the book there is a metaverse. It is a vast virtual reality world where people around the world can connect and interact with each other.

I don't want to give away too much of the story. Our hacker and swordfigher Hiro has to save the day. Some hackers are being infected by a virus and people are trying to figure out what it is. The investigation brings in Sumerian mythology, ideas about information, and even some glossolalia (speaking in tongues).

A lot of the book takes place in Southern California, so there are references to freeways around Los Angeles. However, the references were not imbued with a personal experience of living here. For example, the indefinite article the was left off when referring to "the 405." If the "the" is not there, it is wrong.

If you like science fiction, you should check out Snow Crash. If you like the world Stephenson creates in the first few pages, you should enjoy the book.

Everything falls apart?

On Friday I got an email. I was rejected from the masters in electrical engineering program at Long Beach.

I had not applied to any other schools because I thought I had the best chance of getting into Long Beach. I also had a ridiculously busy April. I have taken 7 classes at Long Beach in the last 2 years with a 3.4 GPA. I figured, if they do not want me what other school would. Immediately I looked online and called another school to confirm they are still accepting applications for their electrical engineering program. I then ordered all of my transcripts to be sent there. I started working on the application. Since it is a Cal State, the application is the same. The only change I need to make is removing the Long Beach specific references from my personal statement.

I am still shocked by their decision. I could site a half dozen reasons why they are wrong. They include the classes I got better grades in than students that were admitted to the program, my undergraduate school being a lot better than anyone else's (Berkeley > USC or any Cal State), my volunteer work experience (anyone else a lead test engineer?), my GRE scores (790 in math anyone?), the recommendations of the Long Beach professors I listed they probably did not talk to (one of the best students in class), my dedication to Long Beach (taking classes there for two years), or my friend who is in the program saying "I am 100% sure you are going to get in, you are better than me."

My biggest disappointment about not getting in is the friends I have made at Long Beach. I met a lot of great people at the Catholic Newman group and was looking forward to doing stuff with them this year.

I emailed my professor earlier today. He said he is trying to get my application reconsidered and get me admitted.

Now for something happier. Yesterday my neighbor told me I should apply to an internship at her company. She said they interviewed a lot of people, but none of them were qualified. I sent her my resume yesterday and today someone from their HR department called me to set up an interview tomorrow. I do not know too much about the internship, just that it is in Irvine and the company does a lot of optics related stuff. I will avoid telling them my worst and most despised area in physics was optics. A big reason I did not like optics was because I was bad at it. I have kept all of my physics textbooks (including a class I dropped after two weeks) except for my optics book. However, my experience with a CO2 laser is pretty good stuff for the opportunity.

Last week and s'mores cookies

I have not had a lot to do for the last several days. This has been great.

On Tuesday I fixed a friend's computer. It was running slow, so I disabled a lot of processes that loaded at startup. Then I went home to finish baking some s'mores cookies. I am not sure where I originally found the recipe online, but it is the same as the recipe from Ice Cream Before Dinner. With 11 tablespoons of butter this is a sure winner.

S'mores Cookies

11 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temp
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 cup mini marshmallows
4 Hershey bars, broken into pieces
1 package graham crackers, broken into squares

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.
2. In another bowl, cream butter with both sugars until light and fluffy.
3. Add egg and vanilla. Then add the flour mixture. Keep mixing.
4. Fold in chips and marshmallows. Chill dough in refrigerator for 1 hour (or even overnight).
5. Preheat oven to 375 F.
6. Line baking pans with parchment paper. Lay out graham crackers side by side on the pans as close as possible (they should be touching).
7. Place a heaping tablespoon of chilled dough on each of the graham crackers. Press down slightly with fingertips.
8. Bake for 5 minutes then remove from oven and put a piece of Hershey bar on top of each of them.
9. Bake for 5 – 7 more minutes or until dough is beginning to turn golden brown at the edges. Cool on a wire rack.

The way I did the cookies was to break the graham crackers in half (so they were almost squares). I then put a scoop of dough on top of each of these squares. When they were finished, each graham square had a cookie and chocolate on top, which was my original image when I heard s'mores cookies. However, looking at the pictures and recipes online, the way they are usually made is to get the dough to evenly bake over all the crackers and then cut them up so they are more like bars instead of cookies.

I made 46 cookies with this recipe. A box of graham crackers usually has 54 pieces when the rectangular ones are broken in half.

While I like baking cookies and giving them to people, I was inspired to share them at a Beach Newman event because of the following exchange on facebook a few weeks ago. Instead of paraphrasing, I will share the entire conversation. The sister below is a lot like Juliette from Berkeley.

Friend (status update): My sister is actually an alien being with magical powers from the planet Soggisandwichonia and she plans on devouring every cookie in our house as soon as I bake some. Her mind powers compel me. I must leave now. Farewell, Earthlings.
Friend: Hacked
Friend's sister: No, she wasn't.
Me: She is an adult; she can bake her own cookies. Also, anyone from Soggisandwichonia should be eating sandwiches.
Friend's sister: But the sandwiches there are all soggy, I want COOKIES!!! And aliens never reach adulthood; that's why we always rely on Earthlings to do our bidding. Do you bake cookies?
Me: Soggy sandwiches? How did civilization ever develop on that planet? I do bake cookies. Growing up, the Cookie Monster was one of my heroes. I often make chocolate chip oatmeal ones, but recently I made some smores cookies that were wonderful. I should bring some to one of the Beach Newman events.
Friend's sister: It's a very moist climate, and yes, you should! S'more cookies?!:)

So I decided to bring cookies to our meeting on Tuesday. While I knew my friend would be there, I did not know her sister would be there as well. I have not seen her since January.

Since I did not have anything pressing to do on Wednesday, I cleaned my room. I found some paperwork I was looking for, threw some stuff out, and did some laundry. It has been a while since I saw this much carpet in my room.