Poo-tee-weet?

mountains and morels

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:59:14 GMT

My two favorite experiences in the last couple weeks are climbing mountains and morel mushrooms.

I met another intern named Josh last week as we were going down to the Pike Place Festival. We spent the day walking around the market buying tasty treats for dinner -- local asparagus, fresh rainbow trout, and morel mushrooms. Later that evening we came back to my apartment and made the tastiest dinner I've had in a long time. The fish and asparagus were great, as would be expected, but what really topped it all off was the morel mushrooms. We prepared them in a sauce made from butter, white wine, and garlic. I don't typically like mushrooms but these were some of the tastiest foods I've had in my life. Morels are pretty cool because, like truffles, they are quite hard to find, can't be grown commercially, and have a very short growing season.

I've also been really getting into hiking and, to a lesser extent, climbing. I do two hikes a week, for a total of about 10-15 miles. I typically do Tiger Mountain every Wednesday after work, plus some other mountain on the weekends. So far I've done Rattlesnake Ledge, the Olympic Coast, trail work on Little Si for National Trails Day, and, today, a killer hike on Mailbox Peak. That last one has a gain of 4000 feet in 2.5 miles -- silly steep. I've also started climbing, which I have to say is really fun. I've taken a couple classes, and there is a gym near my apartment that I can easily go to for practice. Plus, I've found a really great and enthusiastic partner, which I think is really essential to sticking with it. Definitely having lots of fun now that I finally have a chance to get outside more often.

This weekend, I spent Saturday morning doing trail maintenance (with a pickmatic!), then immediately after went climbing for a few hours, and then spent all day today climbing Mailbox. So I'm completely exhausted and sore. Thankfully I've had a chance to take a shower, and now it's time for bed. :)

seattle

Thu, 08 May 2008 05:34:55 GMT

So I'm in Washington (state) right now, typing this at the dinner table of my Redmond apartment. I'm working at Microsoft this summer as an intern in the Windows Live Mobile team. It's a great group and I'm really excited to be here.

It's been a while since I posted. I spent most of the last semester working on the OrangeMesh dashboard (website coming soon, I hope), a web-based management tool for ROBIN wireless mesh networks. It's kind of taken off, among early adopters, but it's been pretty cool to see people actually using my software.

I'm done with my second year of college now -- it's really flown by. I'm most of the way done with my computer science degree, so I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do for the next couple years to fill up my time. Since Eve passed away, I've given more thought to trying to live by the Carolina Way that she espoused. She set such a wonderful example for us to follow. While her death was absolutely devastating, it has compelled me to critically examine how I live my life, how I interact with other people, and what sort of legacy I am leaving behind.

In that spirit, I am trying to take advantage of my summer here to infuse my life with Quality. I am really trying to dive into my job at Microsoft, while at the same time exploring this beautiful region and trying to connect with this community for the brief period that I am here. I went to the Seattle Wireless hack night, where I met some of my community wifi heroes, the folks over at Metrix. Turns out they are all just really smart, really cool nerds who love the potential in wifi. It's great to meet those kind of folks for me. And their store is in the heart of Capitol Hill, which means I'll be seeing one of the cooler parts of Seattle on a fairly regular basis.

I'm going to try to get my pictures up here as soon as I can, or at least links to them. I think now I'm going to eat a snack, watch some more of The Big Lebowski, and go to bed early-ish so I can wake up at 6.00 as I've been doing all week.

lexicon of college students

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:17:35 GMT

Ok, this is cool enough for a post.

Facebook recently unveiled a new feature that I actually like: Lexicon. It lets you compare the usage of certain words on Facebook with graphs and stuff. Here are a few choice selections.

The state of our nation's youth
What's on the mind of college students
Gold star for mindshare

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:38:17 GMT

There is a door on the top floor of the math and physics building that says "Do NOT Open Except In Case of Fire!". Which is an invitation to do just the opposite. What could be on the other side?

I open it, the alarm goes off, and I see a hallway with professors' offices. NOT worth it.

...and we're back

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:52:53 GMT

Seeing as several friends have taken up posting on here again, I figure I'll give it a start. To paraphrase one of you, "If (insert friend's name here) has time to post, then surely I can manage one or two."

My life this semester has been dominated by Palestine, class, and mesh networking. Let's start from the beginning.

A couple weeks ago SPEAC (Solidarity with Palestine through Education and Action at Carolina, phew) put on our first Palestine Week. It was the work of probably no more than 7 or 8 of us, yet as far as I can tell we were able to engage a good part of campus through our events. We had some item in the Daily Tar Heel every day of the week, which was really great. I feel like we introduced a lot of people to Palestinian issues - all our events were heavily attended. I mean, to the point of standing room only, people crowding out in the hallway to hear a talk. It was great. We had our share of Zionist reactionaries, of course (got mentioned on Little Green Footballs, a pretty big ultraconservative blog), but we concluded the week with a letter to the editor from a campus Jewish group supporting Palestine Week. It was just a great experience overall. Lots of work, sleep lost, money spent (out of pocket), but worth it. We had a kickass "Hip-hop for Palestine" event Saturday night too.

My classes this semester are relatively light but all very difficult. I'm only in 13 hours. I'm taking differential equations, which is just really hard, for me (and apparently most of the class; our first exam average was about 26/50). My professor is very demanding but I have to say probably the most fair professor I've ever had. I'm in three CS classes. Two are really closely related: the first is an automata theory class, and the second is computer organization. Automata theory is basically the first course in theoretical computer science, and touches on a lot of the work that underpins the entire field, stuff that they were doing in the 1940's when computers were still abstract mathematical concepts. Computer organization is basically how computers are built, starting with transistors and working our way up. What's really cool is the overlap between the two classes. We talk about abstract CS theory and theoretical machines in my automata theory class, and then talk about how to implement those concepts in silicon in my computer organization class. It's definitely filling in a lot of gaps in my knowledge.

The last class I'm taking is Software Engineering. I'm working on a wireless mesh network management tool for community networks. Check out our project page. I'm really loving this class, although so far it's been the most time consuming and frustrating. It's been a really cool experience working on an open source project. We're coordinating with a guy in Italy and another in Portland on this. The goal is to create a system for non-technical community groups to deploy and maintain wireless networks quickly, easily, and cheaply. We're working with an NGO around here, Orange Networking, to develop this. They're going to actually take our work and deploy around here, hopefully. There's talk that the Town of Chapel Hill might take our system and deploy it in some of the housing projects around as part of a project with the school system to provide internet connectivity to more area students. But that's in really early stages, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Well, that's about all I'm doing. I have slept maybe an hour and a half since 8.00am Tuesday, so I'm going to get to bed now. :)

treb is done

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:46:49 GMT

Whoop-dee-dee! The trebuchet is done. I fired it thrice from my deck using a calculator, flashlight, and bottle of wood glue as counter-weight to throw a hacky-sack across my back yard. It went about twenty feet or so, although it did hit a tree before it peaked out. Tomorrow I take it to an open space and have some fun. Pictures later.

trebuchet

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:48:30 GMT

My brother has to build a trebuchet for his TAG class. I get to help him. I suppose most kids will build a toy one, so we're going to have to do something awesome to outdo them.

Because that's what it's all about.

physics exam

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:32:17 GMT

Mmm, I love my physics class. Our exam is comprised of two main sections that correspond to the two midterms that we took, and one small section of material we haven't had an exam over yet. My prof said that if our midterm grades were higher than our grades on the corresponding exam sections, then he would just use those midterm grades instead.

This got me thinking, and I ran some numbers. Based on my performance on my midterms, my labs, my homework, and my recitation, if I don't show up for the final, I will still have an A in the class. Sweetness. One less exam to study for.

microsoft

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:04:30 GMT

It's official - I've sold out. I'm interning at Microsoft this summer. w00t!

Knoxville, A Better Place

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:54:23 GMT

A quick post between homework and a meeting.

I really, really wish I were in Knoxville right now. I love UNC, this is a great place, but I can't wait to get back to Knoxville. There is nowhere else like it. It's not the greatest city, and it has a lot of work to be done to make it better.

Everything feels simpler there... It's like, when things get hectic you can just drive out down Northshore until the road ends and just sit. Or go down to a park on a lazy summer day and just sit, watching the water. And the mountains - such amazing country just a few minutes away.

It's quiet there. The pace is slower. And it's not boring. There's family in Knoxville, friends in Knoxville. Bluegrass in Knoxville, peace in Knoxville. I am so blessed to have a home that I love so much, and one that I could make my home in the future. I'm starting to become convinced that I want to do my Master's work at UT. Perhaps I'll take another few years to go somewhere more prestigious, but I would have to return to Knoxville afterwards.

I hope my wife will understand this feeling. As it stands, I can't imagine settling down anywhere else, much less raising a family anywhere else.

Coffee

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:33:21 GMT

I've hit a low point. Last night I brought a coffee pot with me into the SASB to help me stay awake even longer. I'm running on 3-4 hours of sleep a night and I'm starting to feel alright about it.

Horrible, horrible, horrible.

But,it seems to be paying off, because I made an A on my last Arabic exam and math quiz, and I felt pretty good about my physics exam today.

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:04:06 GMT

Microsoft's flying me up to Washington in a few weeks for second interviews!

This will be my first time going west of Texas.

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:21:14 GMT

Ideas to consider for summer:

1) Intern at Microsoft. I still don't know if I got to the second interview round with them. Also I'm starting to have ethical problems with the thought of working for them. It'd be fun though.

2) Intern at Google. I am 99% sure they won't hire me.

3) Intern at IBM. This is an interesting option. Their recruiter personally contacted me and told me I had a strong resume... We'll see. They're big supporters of open-source, too. I might even be able to work on something really cool like Eclipse.

4) Google Summer of Code. This, actually, would be the shit. It's a bit of a long shot as well since it's basically pitching a substantial improvement to a pre-existing open-source project. A few I'm interested in are Pidgin (IM), CUWiN (mesh networking), and Player (robot device interface). I would get paid to write OSS code, and get to stay in Knoxville. I wish the application process weren't so late though (late April).

5) Social entrepreneurship fellowship to set up low-cost wifi-based internet for low income communities, potentially partnering with Habitat. I'd really enjoy doing this but I don't know how I'd get money to do it, let alone support myself. There are a couple grants I could apply for, but I don't know how far that will get me. But, if I do well, I'll finish with a business of sorts of my own, or at least valuable experience for starting one up. An interesting option for sure. And gee whiz would a steady, scalable stream of income be nice.

I think a main thing for me is really figuring out what I want to do now. I have a lot of opportunities that I'll be missing out on if I don't take them now. I'd like to stay in Knoxville, near family and friends. I'd like to be near the mountains. I'd like to make enough money to be able to afford a car for next year so I can get back to Knoxville.

I'll be exploring these in the coming weeks as I learn more information about all of them.

Loss of Residency

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:18:01 GMT

I just found out that upon entering the West Bank last week Israel revoked my father's Palestinian residency. Poof. He's no longer legally a Palestinian.

He spent the first eighteen years of his life there and now some teenage border guard says that he can never go back as anything more than a tourist. Poof.

I deeply want to believe that Israel wants to live in peace with the Palestinian people, but actions like this shake that belief to the core. One by one they are driving us out of our homeland.

Too bad we're not leaving.

To-do for Fall Break

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:08:09 GMT

Ah, Fall Break. This place is empty and quiet. Perfect environment for getting stuff done. Sadly, I've done little of that.

I did completely rearrange my room. Now I have separated my work space from my sleeping space from my living space from my food space. I bought a chair off Craigslist today for $25. It's one hell of a sturdy chair - This End Up made it. It must weight at least 50lbs, if not more. After all, it is built from solid wood.

I really like my new room set up. My desk is up next to the window, so I can have a breeze and natural light as I'm working now. The wall behind it is drywall rather than cold cinder block, so my feet stay warm when I put them up next to it. All the mess of my wire rack is hidden by my now-prominently displayed Palestinian flag, but I still get to keep my printer and food next to me and storage space up next to my bed. And, while I was moving stuff around, I vacuumed the room so I can walk around barefoot and keep my feet clean. Elinor likes that last one, I'm sure.

Anyway, this fall break I planned to:
- Finish NCF Paper that was due last week (check!)
- Rearrange room (check!)
- Work on internship paper (check!)
- Begin Zen study guide
- Study for Arabic Midterm
- Finish a few lab reports (get fully caught up?)
- Put together web site presentation for RESPC (check!)
- Figure out how to print to a university printer from Linux (check!)
- Become the darling of the OS community here by doing the above (in progress)

Time to get it done!

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:12:00 GMT

So, I no longer sleep. I've wondered how long I would hold out until I became the typical college student for whom 3.00am means the night is still young. Finally I have my answer - one year, 2 months.

Perhaps, in time, my sleep schedule will return to normal. Alas, for now it looks as if that is not to be the case. Too many classes, too much work, too little time. This weekend should be relatively quiet though. I have to remember that I have a SPEAC meeting to facilitate on Monday (eek!!!). That is going to be a bitch. I also have three lab reports to do (I want to finish two this weekend and get the third one started during the week). In addition... I have a paper for Fellows due Thursday... A programming assignment and an exam next week, several major assignments for Arabic, extracurricular activity reports for Arabic, physics work to catch up on... No math thankfully. We just had an exam. I need to get started on my paper for my other COMP class, but that's a project for fall break. And I should begin rereading Zen, for the third time! I've another paper due for that immediate after Fall Break.

Speaking of, I'm in a state of flux regarding my fall break plans. Elinor's going to the beach for an Alternative Fall Break program to play with turtles or something cool like that. I was thinking of going camping with Mike and then just chilling around here. But! I have an interview with Microsoft on Monday for an internship. If this interview goes well, they'll fly me up to Redmond for the second stage of interviews. If that happens, I'll probably be going over fall break. So we'll see what happens.

Last thing: I get my tablet pc this week! I'm pumped.

Great Grandmother

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 05:54:54 GMT

My great grandmother passed away yesterday morning.

She went peacefully. My grandmother was with her. She told her, "Go on. Grandpa (her husband who died a couple years ago) is waiting for you. Hold his hand and go join him." My great grandmother smiled and then passed on.

Birthday

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 06:44:43 GMT

I haven't updated in a while, but my birthday ended a couple hours ago and I figured it was time.

I kept all but a handful of people from knowing it was my birthday. I thought myself mighty clever. I changed my birthday to Sept. 29 on Facebook a week or two ago, and I just changed it back to Sept. 22 tonight. Thus, I avoided all the Facebook birthday wishes.

My parents came up for the weekend. It's been good so far.

I should recap the semester so far. I'm busier than ever, with 20 hours of classes on top of a plethora of extracurriculars. I'm doing everything this year, except working. I don't have class on Fridays, so I have super relaxing weekends. I don't have too many classes on Monday and Wednesday, either, so even though I have a lot more to do I'm much less stressed than last year because of adequate decompression time. I have killer Tuesdays and Thursdays, though; on Thursdays I'm in class from 9.30 to 7.00 without any breaks, and then I have meetings from 8.00 to 9.30 after that. But I'm done after that, so it's all good.

I bought a Palm the other day on eBay. It's the shit; it keeps me so organized.

All in all it's been a good semester so far. Lots of work but I enjoy being busy. I'm taking awesome classes (mostly) and I'm beginning to realize I know a huge number of people around campus. I've gotten really involved with stuff as well, even though I think my idea for starting a computer education program in the West Bank is doomed to failure. I just don't have time to really put it together. Oh well, maybe when I'm older. This summer I'm going to try to get a job at Microsoft or Google, or maybe here in Chapel Hill doing research. We'll see. I have a couple scholarships I'm applying for that may or may not affect my plans for the summer.

I'm laughing a lot more this semester. This summer was a great break. I don't feel so depressed anymore and in fact I'm thoroughly enjoying life. So much, even, that I haven't felt a need to whine about it on LJ.

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:26:29 GMT

Thank you, xkcd

There was this girl back in high school that I saw almost every day, and I even gave her a ride home once in a while. I knew her for over two years - and to this day I still don't know her name. Oops?

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:11:14 GMT

Tomorrow I'm going to the West Bank. I'm there for a week.

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 08:56:39 GMT

Ah, Amman. Jameel jidan. There are so many new kids here I can't remember all the names. Internet connection here is really bad; I'm stealing it from the house next door right now.

Hopefully a real post later.

on the road again in a manner of speaking

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:54:39 GMT

I'm in Dubai right now for those who are interested. I've been flying for a bit more than 24 hours, and I should only have I think 5 more to go. I should be tired and taking advantage of a real bed right now but thanks to jetlag I still feel like it's only 6.00pm.

Emirates airlines is amazing. Just wow. I flew on an A340-500 from JFK-HAM-DXB. Definitely a pretty cool plane. I'll spare the boring details, but what I thought was totally awesome was that the little in seat screens could show the view from a camera mounted on the front of the plane and one mounted on the bottom.

Tomorrow, I'll be in Amman. Finally. I can't wait. AND what's really awesome is that I'm understanding bits and pieces of the Arabic I hear. Not so much in Germany, but I'm pretty sure I want to go visit/work/live in Germany (learning German, of course) at some point, preferably in that order. But first, Arabic. German's a pretty cool language but I think Arabic definitely takes the cake as far as opening up a new culture to you.

being stalked

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:45:10 GMT

I probably shouldn't be doing this but I"m posting from work. I spent a bit more than twelve hours here yesterday working on trying finish up my project. I don't think I ever really explained what I'm working on. It's a visual tracker for the robots. That means they use their camera to find whatever it is they are supposed to be following and then follow it as it moves around. Originally, it searched for human faces and then tracked them based on color. Which was pretty good for short ranges, and when the face stood out pretty well from the background. Unfortunately, that just didn't cut it with real world performance. So I scrapped 5 weeks of work a couple weeks ago. Now, it tracks based on motion. It finds moving things and tracks the movement. Which works pretty well, especially at long ranges.

It's funny, I forgot I had the robot running while I was typing that up, and it must have seen me doing that because it just drove up to me and is waiting next to my chair. It's kind of freaky what these things are capable of sometimes. Last week I was at a international robotics conference. It was about all different parts of the field - manipulators, navigation, human-robot interaction, learning, vison, etc. I got to shake hands with a robot hand. That was crazy. You grasp this big Darth Vader looking robot hand, and then its fingers grasp your hand. It has quite a firm grip. There was some amazing stuff there. One thing I distinctly remember was this guy from Columbia Vision Lab (university, not the country). His work is on 'computational cameras', and he showed off a couple things. One was this camera that had a conical mirror around its lens, so when you took the picture, you got the regular picture plus a reflected image on the mirror. From that, he could reconstruct a 3D model of whatever you took a picture of! Crazy stuff like that. Our banquet was at the GA Aquarium, and the fellow who gave the talk there was from Berkley and spoke about computers and art. Some amazing stuff, like a robotic garden that they set up so anyone could tend it over the internet. He also played sounds recorded of the earth moving at a fault line. It was really, really loud, but the cool thing was that the whales in the tank next to the banquet hall. They all came up to the window as it was playing and stared inside.

Since I've been back I've just been trying to get everything ready for my trip to Jordan. Part of that is get ready to leave my family again... We went to World's Fair Park for the 4th and stayed there a lot of the day. The fireworks were great, as was the symphony. It's also the 25th anniversary of the World's Fair in Knoxville this year, so they kind of had a celebration for that. We watched a Bavarian oompah band. Fun stuff. There was some crazy bald guy who somehow could dance and keep a cup of water on his head. I think it was just sweaty. Yuck.

AND! They opened the Sunsphere! It's fucking amazing. Paige and I went there during our lunch yesterday. All my life I've wanted to go there and now it's open. No more being asked by my out of town friends what the gold ball is for. 'Uh... It's closed. They don't do anything with it.' They also are planning a restaurant in it as well, which will be awesome. The view is actually really good; you can see all the way to the river, all of downtown, and I'm sure on a clear day out to the mountains as well. Boomsday will be the shit to see from there.

DAMMIT

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:19:52 GMT

Why do I always do this? I just wrote over my latest version of my work for my internship... and I didn't make a backup since last week.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Now I have to do two weeks worth of work in one. And get ready to go to Jordan. God dammit.

This has just been a really bad day.

EDIT: Aha! I forgot I left a backup in gmail the day before I left. Today is starting to look up. :)

By the way, I forgot to mention I'm in Atlanta for the RSS Conference. More later.

gone country

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 03:02:41 GMT

Two nights. The first is not worth mentioning. Rather, I'm not going to. Nor am I really able to either.

Tonight, however, I went to visit my friend Amber. I guess I should say 'ex-girlfriend' but I'm not sure if I can really say that she was ever my 'girlfriend'... it was complicated. Suffice it to say that she is now a good friend of mine. She got married a few months back and tonight I went to visit her and her husband Brandon at their house up in Russellville.

It's an absolutely beautiful country - and by country, I mean country. When I got to their house Brandon was on the porch polishing his boots. He and Amber and I rode around the county in his truck. We went mudding down by the lake, moved some hunting equipment, then finally would up at their friend's house. His name, unfortunately, escapes me. He and Brandon and his nephew went inside and got some guns, mostly rifles and shotguns, and then started shooting things, mostly branches and buckets. It was fun to watch, but this guy gave me the most terrifying scowl when I declined his offer to shoot.

I was going to try to find a picture that was similar to this guy, but I couldn't. He's impossible to describe anyway, or at least beyond my ability. But, I did see something interesting at his house. We walked inside, past the outhouse and the chained up dogs, through the cramped living room where his father was sitting on an old couch, into his kitchen, which was lit by a single light bulb. That single bulb as a CFL. It made me so proud. Even in absolute backwoods Appalachia, people are conserving energy. Whether or not it was a conscious decision, I don't know, but I think you know a technology has been adopted by the mainstream when gun-toting mountain folk start using it in their kitchen.

To avoid sounding more haughty I'm going to stop here. I am really glad I got to go up to see Amber, her husband, and their friends. It's a very different environment. Everyone waves at you when you pass them on the road, your family lives just a few minutes away. People are genuinely nice up there. I just wish some of that would trickle down from up there to here in the valley.

Speaking of things here in the valley, tomorrow I'm going to start becoming a Unitarian. I'm going to stop by the UU church and check things out... given what I've heard about it I think I may have finally found a 'religious' community I can tolerate.