Pitfalls and Alternatives

As I was writing the R03 proposal for NIH grant, I hit a mental breakdown (in USSR, mental breakdown hits me :P)...

Being a grad student, a conventional/structured life is practically non existing. You work at odd hours to get to the deadline. There is no one telling you to come in such and such hours, but the job has to be done. You have to motivate yourself to get off your bum and do stuff, however mediocre the output might be.

When your adviser wrote an email to you at 2AM in the morning, you have to deal with a guilt that if your adviser is still up, perhaps you should be up doing work too. As some point, after all these years spending in school, you ask yourself "why am I doing this?" Will it be that rewarding after you get a degree? Or will you just feel the same? Why are you putting yourself through so much pain? Are you missing out in life?

But then, you have come along this far. If you quit now, you would never know the sense of accomplishment.. the sense of closure. Somebody compares it with finishing the marathon, "I've done it!"

I am so close to finish and yet so far... I can almost hear "Pomp and Circumstance" playing in the background. I want to see the happy face of my parents, advisers, and all my love ones at my graduation.

I guess I would not want to have it any other way...

Fair Game and the Heavy-Handed Editing...

I was flipping through the new book, Fair Game - My Life as a Spy. My Betrayal by the White House, by Valerie Plame Wilson. A lot of stuff in the book is blacked out. I wonder what it would sound like on her audio version? :P

On Academic Papers

..she had managed to make an impression on the pile of manuscripts; she had read three, and had embarked on the fourth. None of them, she thought, was likely to get past the peer reviews, which was sad, as each represented months of effort: thought, planning, hopes. But the problem was that they all had the feel of being written to order, by people who had to write these articles--any articles--because they were academics and it was expected of them. This was their output, the basis on which they would be judged; not on whether they were inspirational teachers who could hold a class of students spellbound, could inspire them to think, but on the production of this sheer wordage, which few would read. Most of these articles would not change the world, would not make one iota of difference to anything.

Alexander McCall Smith, The Right Attitude to Rain; An Isabel Dalhousie Novel, 2006, pg. 65

Good Luck, Lieutenant...

Five years have passed.. finally someone I personally know, is being shipped out. He's not even in the army, but apparently if the army needs a civil engineer, they can "borrow" from other branches. My friend is an air force officer who was stationed in Okinawa right after graduated from college. Now he's back in the states and does not even get a chance to come back to the island before he leaves!!!!

For someone who's about to face the greatest danger of his life, he sounded entirely happy about it. But then again, he's an idealist and believes that he's been giving an opportunity to make a difference. He is one of those people who you'd immediately like the first time you met them, and increase your admiration as the time goes by. He's like this sweetest little brother I always want to have. (mom... can we get him? :D)

I don't know if there's a God, but if there is, please keep an eye on him.

EMBC - Euro Trip

...was awesome!

Neil deGrasse Tyson Rules!!!

ok.. I think I got a little geek struck. ;)

I was watching Neil deGrasse Tyson the other day on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He's the guy from the show called NOVA on PBS. I was impressed by how sincere and enthusiastic he was about science and space. His article about the need to explore space appeared on last weekend Parade Magazine. I really like the bit he talked about "the urge to dream and the will to enable it."

When you go to countries without such ambitions working within their culture, you feel the absence of hope. Due to all manner of politics, economics and geography, people are reduced to worrying only about that day’s shelter or the next day’s meal. It’s a shame, even a tragedy, how many people don’t get to think about the future. Technology coupled with wise leadership not only solves these problems but also enables dreams of tomorrow.

Piled Higher and Deeper!!!

Ph.D. = Piled Higher and Deeper; just like what Jorge Cham said.. :P

Afternoon Delight with FPGA

heheh.. ;)

So yesterday, I spent the afternoon getting FPGA synthesis to work, all without prior knowledge of how to actually use ISE and XPower. It's amazing how much info is out there on the web. I think anyone could easily teach himself how to use FPGA with just a little knowledge of VHDL. I got my results and the progress report done for the meeting done (a day in advance!!! this is the first time in YEARS!). Or maybe I'm just that good.. hahhaha.. NOT!

EMBC 2007 = Speed Writing

Seriously! I've gotta stop doing this conference paper at the last minute. But it seems impossible since my advisor/mentor/role model also does the same thing too.. -_-'

I've just finished writing a paper for EMBC'07 with a new record. I didn't actually start writing until after I finished my instant ramen, which was around 2PM. I just sent it out to my advisor at midnight. So, if I subtract the time which I ate dinner, whined about writing, played with the kitties, etc., I think I spent like 6 hours on this paper.... Seriously? Seriously! I've gotta stop doing this! How am I gonna get to go to France if I work like this?!?!?!?

Seriously!!!

APS 2007 Part 2

Yay! My paper, entitled "Feasibility of HRV Measurement from Single-Channel Doppler Radar," has been accepted for presentation at the 2007 IEEE AP-S International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation. I can't believe it!!!! Here is the reason why.

Agilent Signal Acquisition Seminar

On Tuesday, Feb 6th, Agilent held a 3-hour long seminar all the way out there at Waikele golf club. The talk was about their scopes (digital&mixed-signal), spectrum/vector/fft anaylzers, signal generators, etc. It was not so much so as a marketing talk, but rather some what techie one. They actually covered the block diagram of each general design, pros&cons, and signal theory. The coolest part, for me at least, was all the different types of ADC in their machines. It was eye-openning to see all the tricks they use.

The most important part though, was the free lunch. Hahahahha.. :D I'm pretty sure the reason they had the seminar in Waipahu instead of Honolulu was to weed out the free loaders from UH. But that didn't stop me now - did it? I can see the title of my autobiography: "I'm just here for the free food: A memoir of a grad student " ;)

After lunch, nmh and I stuck around for more questions. At our lab, we have this 2-year-old $25k MSO and I'm pretty much its only user. We never quite figured out how to make the screen "scroll" like normal analog scope (say.. the Tektronix ones). So we asked the guys about that. Two of them spent good 10-15 minutes figured that out on the spot with their demo scope. What impressed me the most was how hard they tried to please the customers. Every question was answered without BSing their way through it. They tried to keep the customers as happy as possible. But of course, when you're in a business that sells a piece of equipment costs as much as a good brand new car, you have every reason to do that!

Wolgemut in Paradise

Yesterday I caught a Wolgemut (vol-ga-moot) live performance at Iolani School in Seto Hall. They played the kind of music used to performed in medieval time. I know nothing about music, but I can tell that their instruments look really cool. Also, Swedish bagpipes sound so much better than Scottish ones.. or maybe the people at CMU weren't quite as good. ;P

PFOSSCON 2007

nmh and I went to the Pacific Free and Open Source Software Conference (PFOSSCON) yesterday (2007-01-20). The event was organized by the Hawai`i Open Source Education Foundation (HOSEF) and held on UHM campus.

R. Stallman, the guy who initiated the GNU project, was there to give a talk. I've heard of the word "idealist" before, but I didn't think that anyone like that would exist in today's world. Mr. Stallman has gotta be one of them. I enjoyed his talk eventhough I can't say I completely & whole-heartedly agree with him.

The other two speaks were from Vyatta and Sun. The Vyatta guy was talking about "Open & Flexible Router"-which uses an x86 machine that runs Debian based OS to act as a router. The guy from Sun (graduated from Punahou! yay!) was talking about their FOSS: OpenSolaris, OpenSparc, and Java. Sun++ actually sponsored all free food and goodies. The event was packed with Haoli (hawaiian for white people) - and more importantly - all geeks! I have to say I've never seen these many geeky white guys in the same place on Oahu before. They are like.. rare species or something, consider that most guys here are either jocks or surfer dudes (or both). It's nice to see that geeky white boys do exist under the Hawaiian sun too!

Anyway, I was just there for the free food.. what can I say... I'm a grad student!

APS 2007

So after of less than a day of really working on it - I finally submitted the paper for IEEE APS 2007 conference. Here is the exact thought I have on this paper:

Is Twisting Student's Arms A Crime?

Apparently, all papers under the Lubeckes got accepted to IMS 2007 conference. I did not submit the paper, but I got a ripple effect out of it too! My advisor was on a must-have-more-paper mood today (in a good way), so she spent a good five or ten minutes after the group meeting to convince me to submit a paper for APS conference. The only problem is - it's freaking due on Monday! I'll have three days to work on it! Oh! Not to mention the fact that we're just going to use previous data to draw a different aspect to it. I was not even involved with taking the measurement for the data! How uncool is that!?!

Oh, and she was all smiley and everything when she said, "did I twist your arms enough?" ... Great.. just great... :P

Shape Up or Ship Out!

My advisor is back on the island. I'd better start doing some work and get some results!!! eeepp!!!

Oh yeah, I'll get to play with a body armour for my research! How cool is that!? :D

International Phone Card Gimmick

Last night I decided to try "Hello Asia" phone card by Sprint. Because my officemate said that it was good. So I went to Longs and bought one for $10. Apparently, this card got the same rate as anything else available; however, there are all these hidden fees:
- weekly maintenance 50 cents
- single maintenance 69 cents
- connection fee 59 cents (after the third call, the ad says No connection fee*)
- post call fee 20 cents (if the call exceeds 15 minutes, which hello? it always does!)

All top of that, the card expires in 6 months! I had the most difficult time connecting at 10PM HST (about 3PM in Bangkok), and all this time I thought there was something wrong with my parents' house. I actually called up the customer service but that did not help. So I gave up after 5 trials. Finally, at 9:30 this morning I could call home (2AM in Bangkok). It was just way too annoying.

I have been using a "Sears Connect" card by IDT since I moved to Hawaii to phone home (Thailand Direct - the collect call service to Thailand, is no longer available in Hawaii). The card has last 12 months without any maintenance fee. I can't actually believe that Sears actually provides the best Asia phone card out there. And all these times I thought I did not find the best deal and just use it out of convenience.

I've gotta get my mom and dad on Voice over IP... seriously...

FoxTrot Cease to Dailies

I am greatly sadden by the untimely departure of the daily FoxTrot strip. But I guess Mr. Bill Amend would like to spend more time with his World of Warcraft.. , I mean, family. I have not been able to find a new fix for geeky comics (except from Jorge Cham's Ph.D. Comics). Maybe I'll just have to go to the bookstores and read all the FoxTrot books (wonder how many I have not yet read).

Happy New Year 2007!!!

about... five days too late :P

This year, I resolve to:
1) work harder
2) complain less
3) call home more often
4) lose weight
5) sprout wings and learn how to fly... :P