worky worky
Well I just started work at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) working in the Signal Exploitation and Geolocation Division as a software guy. I've wanted this job for a few years now, and now that I'm here I can say: it's awesome.
Unfortunately I don't know anything about radio waves beyond highschool physics. The first day I talked to my various bosses. One of them is my official boss, but doesn't actually give me any work. Then I have a project leader, who stays in another building. Thentheres my project leaders boss (who also happens to be my dad's boss). I talked to all these people and got a slightly different description of the project I was to be working on from each of them. I decided to follow most closely my project leader's description since he was a math guy and was doing the best at explaining what i was supposed to do and more importantly how.
So the assignment is to take the signals coming from an antenna array with N antennas and try to give each of those antennas what was loosely described as 'weights' in order to boost a signal coming from one direction while cancelling ('nulling') signals we don't want. This is refered to as Beam Steering in the RF (Radio Frequency) community.
So basically I'm designing a way to use a set of antennas as a directional antenna whose direction i can change without actually physically moving anything…. I didn't even know that was possible! Butthats what i was left with the first day, and the promise of a little example code to look at (which still hasn't shown up yet) and four college engineering textbooks with scary looking formulas in them. But none of these books say a word about beam steering, and the internet didn't turn much up either.
Today I got a copy of a little bit of code from my dad and began to step through it peice by peice and with a lot of help from him was able to understand it. Suddenly I saw waves in time domain and in frequency domain and they made sense. I could picture the energy in a wave as a real and imaginary component, and that could be in cartesian or polar form. I understood being in and out of phase and how phase was related to beam steering. I still wasn't quite able to generate even a single beam steering vector, much less a bunch of them with an optimal configuration, but the theory makes sense at least. I can see how it would be done. Its really cool to be learning like this with a direct purpose. Something you don't tend to encounter in undergrad college. I think this might also prompt me to take a signals EE class, and maybe do my undergrad thesis on direction finding systems.
Another relief is that while everyone is trying to work very very hard, there is no constant check-up pressure, and everyone is exceptionally nice. And even though I am working on a standalone demo tool, i still feel like I'm a part of something bigger, with lots of people helping me out. I have a secretary (not to myself mind you..). I have a supply closet with all sorts of free office stuff. My boss will get my any software and even hardware I need (as long as i actually need it)
Worst Flat Tire[s] EVER
Saturday dad was coming up to austin to help me move all the big things out of my dorm since they don’t fit in my tiny little car… but we ran into a little trouble.
One of the truck’s tires just kinda flew apart- tread speparation. But the spare was reallylow, and the tire was still actually inflated, so he just started looking for somewhere to get help, and driving really slow. That lasted for about a mile before the tire went flat. So on goes the spare, and it looks like it holds air… barely. So he keeps drivinguntill he can air it up at a u-haul place. back on the highway for 10 miles or so and then the old raggedy looking spare bites the dust with a blowout.
This is where i come in. Dad calls me to come pick him up. Hes only about 30 miles away so i jump in my car and go find him on the side of the road trying to get a strippedlugnut off the wheel which he just put on an hour ago. The problem was the socket didn’t fit very well, so we tried fitting little pieces of metal over the nut, but no use. We found alowes and a tire place so we fixed the already removed regular tire, and got two vice grips from Lowes to see if we could get a good grip and wrench that lugnut off. But it was on too tight. After trying everthing we could think of we decided to try to beak off the lugnut any way possible. Our approach was a small sledge hammer and a cold-metal chisel.
Let me tell you this right now. Don’t try the chiseling the lugnut off approach. It really just doesn’t work. After lots of hard hammering we ended up with a lugnut that had just been smushed back into a recess of the wheel. There was no way to get it off without a cutting torch now, but its now past 5pm saturday night. No car place is open tonight, and no one will be open tomorrow either.
We call it a day and eat at the chilie’s across the road before driving south to New Braunfels to pick up an extra van from grandma, then back north to austin. Dad left san antonio at 2pm, and made it into austin at 10pm. We pack all the big stuff into grandma’s van, and dad spent the night here before going back to san antonio this morning.
oh, and it was really hot and muggy the whole time… like 95 degrees. And my dorm A/C bearly works.
fatherly advice
dad: Fatherly Advice: Try to avoid stupid mistakes….
oh thanks dad ;-)
sleeping room
I got a call from the River Oaks apartment people. We now have our apartment set, we will be living in apt# 132. Jeremy had been told the code to get in earlier so we went and checked it out, and figured out how we were going to arrange things and take measurements for furniture. We decied we would try having a single sleep room with all the beds, and a single study/computers room with all the computers and desks. Our living room will have the console games, TV, and will be hooked up into a free version of Tivo (mythTV). We also hope to wire the place with gigabit ethernet. I can't wait to move in.
Jeremy also found my long lost camera – so the pictures will flow again
really really long post that covers so many things i can’t name it
Disclaimer: much of the content of this post is incredibly stereotypical college-student. It is also exteremly long, and i have resorted to writing it in emacs rather than on elissa's web browser since her dsl line, her browser, and her computer are all in cahoots to erase my article (they did it twice)
Finals week:
Finals are upon me, I must study when i can, and sleep only after that. This results in me being up all night wednesday, sleeping all day thursday, studying all thursday night, and then sleeping a good portion of friday.
Friday:
I wake up around 7 and round up a gang to go eat. On the way out, I see gilbert in boxers. Oh yeah! its no pants day. As soon as we get back from all you can eat pizza, Rob and I loose the pants (his jeans are still in my room… heh). Since it's my room i take the extra time to put on boxer briefs under my boxers (don't want anything to unexpectedly pop out :-P ).
Looking to celebrate I gather caroline and claire and along with rob we head out to the hooka bar to relax in our pantsless state. We get lots of "whats with the uh… the… um…. why are you wearing boxers?". Normally somone else would be around that knew it was no pants day, and would inform the person about our fight against the evil pants.
By 11:30, Rob and I were ready to hit the party going on in Andrew and and Frit'z room on the third floor of my dorm. I tried to get the guys on my floor to go, but they had all been asleep since like 4pm (they too had been studying all night… or, in some cases, gaming). Rob and I went up and found andrew's room well populated with people playing drinking games, along with a keg in the corner. The keg had been smuggled up the stairs, since no one there was 21. Rob and I managed to convince most of the guys in the party to take off their pants, and the idea even trickled down to a few of the girls. Okay, just one girl, but i still count it a success. The room had over 25 people in it at one point, and after I left alex was convinced to do a keg stand. That was after 3 guys ran down stairs in boxers and dragged him upstairs to the party and away from his video game.
let me emphasize how college-esq this night was:
- I had been studying nights and sleeping days
- I ate all you can eat pizza for dinner
- I went to a hooka bar
- I went to a kegger party in the dorms
- I did most of the above sans-pants
In fact, 80% of the people i saw after 1am weren't wearing pants (even though no pants day was officially over).
Saturday:
Wake up at 12, and eat breakfast with mike and alex, and FINALLY manage to convince somone to go to the new gregory pools with me. There are tons of hot girls there, and at least 5 or 6 guys in speedos. We were excited about the former, not so much the latter. We made fun of one of them who for a solid 30 minutes was putting on tanning lotion or something alone in a section of girls, and doing it in a very slow and sensual way. We avoided him and his speedo, by visiting the hot tub on the other end of the complex, but are quickly joined by two more people from the speedo club. card carying, butt-crack-showing members. We tried to avert our eyes as one of them decided to change in the middle of the patio, mooning the entire pool. Mike wasn't quite as fast as Alex and I, and has been scarred for life. It was even more awkward later that day when we saw him walking past kinsolving. I mean what do you say to guy like that… "hey man, i saw your butt a few hours ago at the pool – nice place no?"
Saturday afternoon I decide to come visit Elissa one last time before she cavorts around europe without me. I kinda got lost getting there, but found a senic state park along the way… pretty close to austin. Lost Pines or something like that. (no… NOT lost maples). Anyways, i was welcomed with a kiss from elissa and a bowl of nice japanese steamed rice from her mom.
Sunday (today):
Elissa treats me to a place called the Hobbit Hole. Where we buy the India Pale Ale named after the same ship Elissa is named after. It is the most tasty beer ever, and has almost a lemonade flavor to it. I get a sandwich which is like 40% avocado. The plan was to come back today, but elissa managed to change my mind with food, ice-cream, and coffee. I better get that french toast i was offered tomorrow morning :-9
two down
hey networks: you got PWNT. actually i know i missed a CRC calc and a Key Distribution Center protocl. but thats like 8 points out of 100 or something. Hopefully those two tests will make up for my probably B in SPN :-( – then if i get an A in automata, i can have like a 3.8 GPA.
*returns to studying for spanish*
Cocktail party! zzzzzzzz
Late night networks studying and i ran across this slightly disturbing picture of a man passed out at a cocktail party. Screenshot straight from the professor’s slides.
what is this? it is nothing!
“seriously, the set of computable numbers is countable! you can arrange them all in a series – what kind of set is this?! yt is nah-thing!!”
-lifshitz (read with a russian accent)
on computable numbers vs uncomputable numbers. basically every number you can begin to describe is computable, yet there are infinitely more uncomputable numbers.
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