You may be a hardcore engineer (or PhD student) if you

For those who are not engineers, this can serve as a handy guide to sniff out those of us around you. For those who are, but may be questioning your credentials or trying to play down your nerd card, this is your wake up call.

If you apply engineering principles to your regular life? I.e. the noisy channel model to dating, optimization methods to arranging your dishwasher, minimum entropy to your porn, you are likely a hardcore engineer.

Perhaps you solve “interesting” problems just to solve them, not for any possible benefit – grades, pay, extra credit, impress your boss/adviser – just to see if you can do it. If you regularly use up what is likely scant resources of your time and brainpower on problems that have a very low chance of actually paying you back something later, you are probably a hardcore engineer.

Or maybe you’ve having a conversation with a friend about something you’ve been working on and they ask for the “simple” explanation. And after you give them what is arguably the elementary school (in your head) explanation, they ask you to dumb it down some more. Until you end up saying, “well, pretty much I’m trying to *verb* *noun* much more {efficiently, cheaply, faster, simpler, to use less resources} and only then is when they nod and make that ‘aahhh’ noise that says “I still don’t understand but you’ve probably reached the limit that you mind will allow you to simplify this problem”, you are most likely a hardcore engineer.

Do you have boxes, parts, notebooks, and files on projects that you started in the past, where you were really excited about what you were going to do, but somehow never finished because you started on another project that had similar potential, but you never throw them away because one weekend, after you’ve caught up on the work you’re doing now, you’re going to go back and finish? You are definitely a hardcore engineer.

Did you read this and spend the whole time thinking, wow, this is all so familiar, but in actuality you spend your days teaching kids how to draw, or designing purses to be made out of eco-friendly fibers, or writing copy for a news article? If so, you are likely a hardcore engineer’s girlfriend.

The Latest Front

The latest front in the presidential race, well, not really latest, this line of attack has been going on since the beginning, but certainly rearing it’s head again on the heels of Colin Powell’s support of Barack Obama – Powell is only voting for him because he’s black. Yes, that’s the conservative pundit’s best attempt to marginalize the implications of Powell’s remarks. As usual, those idiots don’t quite realize that by implication, they are either suggesting that they themselves are voting for McCain because he’s white, or that black people in general are neither smart enough nor caring of their community, their nation, the economy, or any of the other issues to be able to make an informed decision.

It’s funny, the essential charactization of Barack Obama voters are either the actual racists in America (black people) or elitist white guilt assuaging arugula eaters. That’s why the McCain camp would have your believe there are “real” and fake parts of America. For example, nothern VA, fake. The rest of VA, real. Part of the racism issue is that many people, especially those in the majority, believe that racism is defined by intent. That is totally wrong. Unlike murder, there is no self-defense argument for racism.

But enough about that. Last week, I more or less officially chose a thesis advisor. This has been a tough issue for me. From all I’ve read and advice I’ve gotten, choosing an appropriate advisor has far reaching effects on one’s career. Now, I have a pretty solid idea of what I’d be doing in the first few year immediately following graduation, but in case that does not pan out, I want to be on solid footing if I choose a research or academic track instead of going back into industry.

By solid footing, I mean I want to have experience and skills in exactly the area I’d like to work, decision making with mobile intelligent agents. So, the best thing would be for me to work with a professor doing research in that area because a graduate student’s own research tends to be along the same lines. The issue, lack of options in that regard at Pitt. So, either I work on transferring to CMU (or another school), or I find myself doing work that’s tangentially related to what I really want to do. Anyway, whether or not I transfer, I still needed to choose an advisor for the time being. So I went with the guy I’d most likely want to work with, whose research is in a similar area and got the shock of my week:

He’s willing to help me develop my own research topic and essentially guide me along, if that’s what I want to do. It would require more initiative on my part, working on finding avenues for funding, coming up with ideas, etc, but, he’s willing to help as long as I put in the work. So, turns out that I probably made the best choice after all.

But leaving that aside for now, tomorrow will be pretty much an entire month (ok, exactly 4 weeks), since I last spoke with HEC. Interestingly enough, she hasn’t called or texted me in that time either. I was hoping I’d be over her by now, but uh. . .not quite. I guess this is one of those that only goes away when someone else takes her place. . .grr.

Confessions of a Bad Student

My pen name is Kamakula, and I’m a bad student. Perhaps even a bad person.

Let me explain. For the past two weeks, I’ve been waking up later and later in the day. I’ve done very little for my TA assignment – arguably one of the cushiest, an open ended project where I have latitude to plan and spend to my hearts content. The only constraint is that I devote 20 hours per week to this as per my contract as a TA. I doubt I’ve even accumulated a TOTAL of 20 hours on this project 5+ weeks into the semester.

Meanwhile, I’ve been waiting till the last minute to do homework. Last week, I was unable to complete the homework for one of my classes. It was sacrificed so that I could finish work in another. This week, last minute work plus a dying battery and having to find a place to plug in resulted in my not completing the hw for another class.

Theoretically, a good student could recover from this missteps. After all, the assignments are fractions of 10-15% of my grade, not enough on their own to take me down. However, I already know I’m not a good student. Then, with all this going on, I’m taking the weekend off. Driving up to my alma mater. This means that there will be no work accomplished from Friday until Monday.

So, it can be shown I’m a bad student, but that does not necessarily mean I’m a bad person. Well, for that to be true, that would mean that the majority my “person” qualities are bad. So, if we define person qualities as the set consisting of

• Student quality
• Son quality
• Friend quality
• Citizen quality

We’ve already demonstrated I’m a bad student. What about son? My dad has been getting emails asking him to sit on decision boards for several fellowship foundations. He’s been encouraging me to apply to these (and I’ve been saying that I will). Because of my (anticipated by him) participation, he must recuse himself from serving – conflict of interest issues.

Now, most of these programs have deadlines at the end of this month or beginning of November. Given the catch-up I’ll be playing, my likelihood of applying decreases which means I’d curtailed my dad’s ability to serve on those boards. This will cause my parents to be disappointed in the future when they learn I did not earn any additional funding while I continue to be a (non-producing) financial burden to my department.

Also, I’ve been “encouraged” to choose a thesis advisor this semester. I’m not sure which category this falls into. Essentially here is the problem. My field of interest is robotics. Specifically, I’ve come to decide that I want to conduct research in the area of reasoning and decision making systems. There are two professors who do work in related areas. One is primarily a pattern classification guy. I’ve taken one class from him and currently I’m taking a second. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I CANNOT work with this guy. It’s not just that what I want to do is not really pattern classification or that he doesn’t really work with actual robots, but based on having him as a teacher, I know we’re not compatible.

The other option is my current advisor. He’s a young and rising star in our department. However, his focus is in biomedical robotics. Now, I’d admit that I haven’t read much of his work, so perhaps there’s more areas of convergence between his work and what I want to do, however, from talking to him, he’s reluctant to take on a new student. Now, I’ve learned that I have department funding for about two more years. More than enough time for me to get involved and work out an RA in the future. I’m not sure if he’s just unaware of this, or if there is more to it.

I knew coming in that there were few professors in my department who were actively doing research in my areas of interest. The other schools that accepted me had more opportunities (or stronger ones) however, I chose UPitt because I was awarded a fellowship, my best friend lived here (at the time), and I’d be closer to CMU (and somehow entertained fantasies of working there while being a UPitt student).

Hmm, citizen-wise, I routinely break speed limits. I’m not talking 45-50 in a 40. I’m talking 100mph in a 30. This typically happens tuesday and friday nights . . . nevertheless. I’m also driving an uninspected car. I know it will fail inspection, there is at least one thing that I need to fix before I even attempt to have it inspected, probably more. But I’m hoping I can get some sort of exception for the other issues.

So, how am I a bad friend. Well, there is a group of us who have loosely joined together to develop ideas for a potential tech company. The nominal head is currently busting his ass at an 80hr/wk job where he’s getting first hand experience with the running of a startup. Others are working hard at jobs or school. I’m viewed as one of the major technical drivers of the group. This means that I’m one of the two or three who’d be expected to do the major hands-on work converting our ideas into an actual working project. Yet based on things, I’m probably the laziest and least motivated one. I’m letting my friends down by not working hard at school, to complete my degree in a timely fashion, to take advantage of my schooling to make me highly qualified so that when our resumes are shown to prospective investors, they can feel safe investing with a group of people who have a proven track record of academic excellence and demonstrated capabilities of taking projects from start to finish.

Possibly though, my biggest failure as a person is recognizing my failures and still not actually doing much of anything to correct them beyond the useless tactic of writing about it. If I review my blogs and other writings, this is a recurring post. This means over the six years since I’ve graduated from high school, there’s been essentially zero personal improvement. I’m pretty much the same 18 year old except I have more responsibilities, more debt, and know a bit more about my field.

It’s ironic. I want to create rational artificial decision making agents yet I’m unable to make rational decisions in my own life. Fucking blind leading the blind. Or in this case, blind leading himself.

The Fire Has Been Lit: A Stirring Tale of Ambition, Motivation, and Fraternization

Yesterday I had a meeting with the Graduate Student Advisor. He was very informed about me and what I’ve been up to. Kinda scary actually. The thrust of the meeting is that I’ve been going with the flow here and need to get my butt in gear so I can graduate quickly or I should transfer to another school (he picked up on the big robotics stuff in my application, resume, and that I spent the past summer working at CMU). Not that I necessarily have to obey (well, there is some slight coercion – he’ll guarantee me the TA assignment I want in the spring), but I need to pick a thesis advisor and get started on a planning committee and perhaps negotiate my prelim assignment. . . within the next two weeks.

So, the good news, we reviewed Pitt’s requirements, aside from the actual dissertation, comprehensive exams, and other things, I’ve got 72 credits total to collect before I pass graduate and collect unemployment insurance. The planning committee can transfer up to 30 of those from my Masters work. 16 will be thesis credits, and by the end of this semester, I’d have taken 18 at Pitt. This leaves me with just 8 more credits to take – pretty much three classes (or less, if graduate seminar counts, I could be done with classes).

It’s kinda scary and kinda exciting at the same time. On the one hand, within the course of two semesters, I’m almost halfway done with my PhD program (nevermind that the other half will take 2-3 more years). Still, I’ll be Dr. Kamakula by the time I’m 26 or 27. Awesome. On the other hand, I actually have been thinking about transferring to CMU and would have to go through at least the prelim process again if I do.

Then again, there’s still no guarantee that I’d actually get into CMU and the only professors at Pitt that I’d want to write me recommendation letters are the ones I’d want on my committees here. Well, I’ve learned a few more things:

1. There are people here who will help me meet my graduation goals even if it means giving me swift kicks in the posterior.
2. The graduate student secretary apparently tells other people in the department what I’m up to -there was no paper trail (here) on my CMU activities.
3. I really have been slacking off and losing sight of the goal here: wham, bam, thanks for the PhD ma’am.

In other news, it must be raining cute psych majors. The girl I’ve been chatting with after my 230p class in the CS building (psych), the chick I chatted with on the bus this morning who goes to CMU (psych). The hot graduate student who gave the “Handling Difficult Situations”/sexual harrassment/don’t f*ck your students – talk at the TA orientation this past saturday (psych). [Oh, I forgot also the extremely hot chick sitting in the row in front of me in said session - also a psych major].

I think I’m finally getting over my crush and in doing so, I’m getting to know her better. Besides, I need more female friends. I’m going to see how things go over the next few months.

A New Technical Term and Other Business

To describe a procedure where we vary the location of an antenna to attempt to either average out the effects of multipath or remove it altogether, we’ve started talking about jiggle. There have been whole conversations whose verb and noun make use of that word. Teleconferences where engineers with 10, 20, 30+ year experiences are throwing that word around. And so, I must concede that jiggle is indeed now a technical term.

In other news, it looks like my energy level is down. Instead of going out Tuesday night, I stayed at home relaxing, reading, and watching anime. I figured that would be a good way to recharge me – WRONG. All day today (keep in mind that I overslept), I’ve been tired, listless. Food has not changed it – so it’s more of mental thing than physical. I want to go home and just sit down and read but I feel obligated to stay here and put in some more hours (it’s pretty much my last week).

It’s funny, I’ve been trying to cure Nate of his feelings of obligation to places that don’t deserve it (or probably even care) and yet I’m here doing the same thing. Classes start next week and I’m a TA this year, so I’m going to need to up the energy level and soon.

I think I really need to define a research path for myself and soon. Writing this post has triggered a chain of thoughts whose conclusion is that I’m starting to lose my motivation again.

Ahh, Finally a relaxing week

Despite the fact that it is 12:30AM and I’m at work (I took a few hours off between 10 and 12 to goto my Tuesday night hangout – the Shadow Lounge), this is still a pretty relaxed week. Yes, there is some work to be done on my car, but nothing approaching the amount or intensity of any weekend in the previous two months.

I can now actually get out again and do stuff. . . or go places and not do stuff if I so desire. Perhaps it was the alcohol, or perhaps it was the affirmation, but I feel really good right now. Let me explain:

Tuesday nights at Shadow Lounge is open-mic night. I’ve gone up a couple times to share things and this week, during the break, I made an effort to go and chat with a couple people (after first talking with the chick who seemed to be eyeing me when I first came in). Anyway, someone told me that they liked my presentation from last week.

I was floored because frankly I feel that most people who come up are on a much different level than I. Even with that in the back of my head, I still felt good hearing that. Hopefully, this keeps up through next week when I’ll do a more or less finalized version of this.

Tonight, I also again put the car through some paces. . . whew, I’m falling in love all over again! This is a good thing. I already know that events such as accidents or major failure tends to alienate people from their cars and they usually end up selling it once it’s fixed. I’m glad that I still have the same enthusiasm for it. One thing that helps is that the car is, as my cousin put it on Saturday, “timeless”. I just love the look and can see myself with it for a long time. Having 50 more HP doesn’t hurt either

I’ve always felt that I could do well enough without having others to validate me. Certainly, that is a trait necessary for survival in a small company or research lab. But validation definitely has its good sides. Even though I’ve got a minimum of three more hours of work before I leave to catch some Zzzs, I feel really hyped to get my work done.

I think this is how I envisioned my entire summer experience. I’d work reasonable hours and be relaxed enough to enjoy it, even when doing boring things. Now, my goal is to attempt to replicate this zen-like feeling during the school year. I talked with a TLH friend online this evening and he mentioned leaving to go play volleyball. I definitely reminded me of the big sports void in my life. I’d love to get back into a volleyball and/or soccer league. That will definitely be on my calendar this fall semester!

This was Supposed to Be

My summer to relax. My summer to recover. My summer where I did not work very hard. Then several things happened. However, the car break down is probably the worst, in that it drains all my spare cash and time. Now I work 40-50 hours a week, admittedly on a job I like, then spend about another 20+ on the weekends fixing the car.

The cost of fixing the car means that I’m not going to be able to relax my working schedule for the entire summer. I suppose that within two weeks, I’d at least have reclaimed my weekends and being able to drive to and from work will net me a bit more time to sleep or at least give me more flexibility to work when I feel motivate rather than having to structure my time around a fixed bus schedule.

This post though is prompted by me feeling immensely tired and listless at the moment. Perhaps I should just take an hour or two to sit and read, then come back and continue working. I guess I’m worried that tomorrow afternoon, this feeling of ennui will return and cause me not to get as much work done on the car as I’d like. Then the process of having it up and running would be delayed even further.

Perhaps I’m just lazy. I can’t help but think of other people who work longer hours than I do and they don’t complain. Or maybe this is my unconscious attempting to test my resolve to stay in grad school. If so, I’d wish it’ll stop.

I feel good and bad at the same time

Good because things seem to be moving pretty well with fixing the car. Bad because I feel I’ve not been giving my work as much of my attention and time as I should because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and working on finalizing details such as tracking down parts, figuring out what things need to be done, etc.

So, I’ve got everything ordered up minus some miscellaneous bolts which I can pick up anywhere, an engine hoist that I’m buying on Friday, and the wheels I want to put on my car – the seller is dragging his feet. Nate volunteered to come this weekend so I’ll have help. The good news, likely things will move a bit faster. The bad news, I can only afford to pay for a hotel room for one night this weekend. So, we’ll have to make the best of the time we’ll be there.

We should arrive Friday afternoon, pickup the hoist (and hopefully my engine), finish disconnecting the existing engine stuff, remove the engine and transmission, then hopefully swap the transmission to the new engine after installing my new clutch and flywheel, then get the new assembly into the car and bolted down.

After that, get some sleep, then the next day, connect up everything to the engine and transmission, perform fluid flushes, and attempt to start the engine. If the engine starts and idles ok, we can do some miscellaneous things like fixing the bumper, headlights, foglights, then putting those back on the car.

After cleaning up, we can head back to Pittsburgh. The following weekend, he can drop me off Friday afternoon. I’ll complete reassembly of the front end, install the new brakes and exhaust, swap the rear end suspension components and install (hopefully) my new wheels. Do a final cleanup of the garage and drive home after returning the keys on Saturday.

This is good because it builds in two full days to catchup on work if necessary.

I’m Still a Poor Grad Student

I was reminded of this today by someone on a blog I read when I attempted to make a job about putting in my 3 cents – that my thoughts were more expensive due to the rising gas costs.

Ah well. Today was one of those that we starving grad students live for. I got to attend a talk that I was pretty interested in followed by pizza and soda afterwards. Then a few hours later, the secretary for my research lab came by to inform us that there was food available (I guess some high level meeting people did not consume all the provided eatables).

I wonder if there is more to come today? Sadly, I’m still hungry. I’ll probably end up eating the stuff I brought for lunch anyway, meager as it is.

In other news (if you know me, the ONLY other news would be related to my car), I’ve found someone near Philly with EXACTLY the wheels I’ve been salivating over for the past few months. I may be able to get them for about what I want to spend too. I got a quote for shipping through greyhound ~ $85. Hmm. . . I believe I’ll be taking advantage of Greyhound’s cheap shipping more often.

I realized the other day that I needed a 6cylinder exhaust system for the swap. I found one, called the guy and tentatively made a deal, then realized that he likely has other parts that I need. Rather than scavenge things from several different sources, if he has all the stuff I need, I can likely get a better price since I’ll be buying a lot of stuff from him, thus paying a bit more, and he gets rid of stuff faster, etc.

To be honest, you’d make more money by selling things piece by piece, but most people when they get around to it always feel a need to get rid of the junk car in their yard as soon as possible. So when someone comes along that wants to buy a lot of stuff, they compromise on the total amount that they could have made.

So, brake upgrade, exhaust, engine (which I have), and a few other assorted (small) things are all I need for a complete (and drive safe) working swap. So far, I’m still on track to finish in the time I want. Of course, I’m making huge assumptions about how easy the engine stuff would go. I mean, I plan on putting in at least a full 20+ hours of work over the weekends.

A pro shop (with lifts, experience, and all needed parts) can do this in a day’s time. Assuming that’s two guys at 8 hours, that’s 16 man hours. I figure it should take me four times as long – 64 man hours which fits into doing three weekends at 20+ hours a week.

In any case, this weekend should be a yardstick that I can use to determine if I’ll be able to make my schedule.

Mundane Mundo

This is probably the blandest post this blog has ever seen. Why, because it’s just an snapshot of what is going on at the moment. Not that the others were not, but here I’m not really going to talk about my motivations, fears, plans, thoughts, or emotions. I’m just going to state what’s been going on.

So, I’ve been on the job for three days now. Unfortunately, yesterday was the start of a cold that has since gotten worse. I knew something was wrong when I woke up more than 2 hours later than I expected with no recollection of hearing my alarms. Then today that became 4 hours later.

I feel confident that by the end of this week, I’ll be past the initial warm-up period as I get acclimated to the new environment, people, and work I’ll be doing. I must say that CMU has a weird computing system in place and (in my view but probably I’d do the same if I was their master sys admin) draconian usage policies for their internet. Once again, I’m reminded of how superior RIT’s system has been compared to every other university that I’ve been a part of.

Car-wise, things are moving along. I’ve found a garage that I can rent for $25/mo. So, the car will be towed there this weekend. I’ve also located a replacement engine that I can get for about $150 less than I’d expected to pay. If things go smoothly, I should have the car running in time to drive to DC as I’ve planned in July without my parent’s ever knowing something was wrong. Well, I’ll likely tell them, but it will be after things are fixed.

My reading pace has dropped off since I was in high school. However, one thing being carless has afforded me is time to read. On the bus ride to and from work, I have about 45 minutes of reading time. The plan is to consume a book a day during the week (since weekends will be mostly me working on the car and being too tired and too dirty to pick up a book). I wonder how many kids of the current generation check out books the way I do now, much less the way I did when I was younger?