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Ok, so anyone who’s checked my blog in the last couple of days has probably noticed that I haven’t really posted since I got to Hawaii, and anyone who’s really paying attention will notice that a new post has shown up today that has a date stamp of a couple days ago… yeah, I’ve basically been playing with the space-time continuum again.

So the deal is, I wrote that post on the plane, fully intending to publish it as soon as I got the chance in the hotel that night. Imagine my dismay when I realized that there is no free internet in the hotel… that’s right, none. Needless to say, for a geek like me, that’s practically a death sentence (ok, maybe not). To make matters worse, they charge you for local calls, so even using dial-up is more painful than usual.

So what have I been up to? Well, for one, not getting nearly as much sleep as I’d like. Mom and Dad don’t seem terribly inclined to let Jen and I sleep until noon, something about actually enjoying this island that we’re on. I suppose it makes sense. Kind of.

Anyway, Saturday we finally got to Honolulu after a full day of flying. We left home in ‘da burg at 5:15 EST, flew out of Lansing at 7 EST, flew out of Detroit at 9:15 EST, landed in San Francisco at 11:30 PST, flew out of there at 3ish PST, and landed in Honolulu around 7 Hawaii time (HST? I dunno, but works for me). After collecting our bags, getting a taxi, and checking into our hotel, we took a stroll down Waikiki, got some dinner, and walked along the beach. I have to say, the ocean is beautiful in the evening.

Sunday we took some time to do some shopping and touring around Waikiki, stopping at many of the vendors’ stands in the International Marketplace, which is basically a big open air market with lots of small vendors. Our suspicion is that many of the small stands are all run by the same family or few families, and it’s definitely a tourist trap, but at those prices, it’s really hard to care. I mean, I got some new necklaces for 3/$5, which makes it hard to care that each necklace only cost them $0.10. I mean, I’m not that cheap. Anyway, after shopping and lunch we got our swimsuits on and headed to the beach. It was Jen and my first time swimming in the ocean, and it was definitely an interesting experience for someone who has grown up swimming in fresh water. All I have to say is, dannnnnng that water is salty (yeah, I know it’s called salt water for a reason, but I like salt, and that stuff is overwhelming). In the evening we went back to the beach and watched Cinderella Man on a large screen that they had set up. Good movie, and a good time, even if the wind was a little chilly (keep in mind when I say chilly that I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt ).

Today we got up early and made arrangements to go on one of the bus tours of O’ahu, which was very interesting. I’d have to say that Sunset beach was probably one of my favorite things on the tour. That’s on the North Shore where they have the professional surf competitions, and the beach and the surf are extraordinary. My general feeling now is that Waikiki is overrated.

Anyway, I saw a bunch of cool stuff today, and I’ll probably expound on it more later, but I’m tired, and I’m probably going to be awoken much earlier tomorrow than I’d like. Aloha, and good night.

Ok, ok, so I suppose it’s time for another post, especially since the last one probably doesn’t count. What can I say, I’ve been insanely busy, and when the choice is between writing a blog post and sleep, well, sleep wins every time. And if the choice is between blogging and an hour of video games, yep, you guessed it, blogging loses again.

So what’s been going on? The sad answer is, nothing too terribly exciting, pretty much more of the same. That translates to, lots of school work, lots of work, lots of homework, and not a whole lot of sleep. I have to say, if there’s one thing I’m definitely looking forward to about graduating, it’s the fact that homework, while likely not totally absent, will certainly be minimized. And THAT is a very good thing. So what’s been keeping me so busy you ask?

Anyway, as to what’s been keeping me so busy. The short answer to that is the same it always is, class. EECS470 is, as I knew it would be, on the verge of life-consuming (almost typed life-confusing there… also fairly accurate). Between homework, projects, an exam, and the beginning of our group final project, I’ve been constantly working on at least 2 things for that class at any given time. That’s not to say I dislike the class, although the lectures aren’t my favorite. The material we’re going over is very interesting, and most of it is frankly amazing. There have been several days that I’ve walked out of class asking “How in the world did someone ever actually think of solving that problem that way?” And those were days that we were discussing teqniques for processor design that are, by today’s standards, pretty simple, although many of the basic principles remain the same. We like to think that the information age started in the 80s or 90s (or at the earliest, in the late 70s, when the first hobbyist computers were widely available). The fact of the matter is, computing technology developed long before that, even if networks and wide adoption of them didn’t come until much later. It’s all incredible.

Slight tangent, but I realized the other day that I’m officially now one of those people that, when you ask them what they do, or what they would like to do, their answers make absolutely NO sense, unless you happen to have a degree in the same field. I can see it when people ask what computer engineering is. I see it when I try to explain my projects to my family and friends, and even the engineers among them wear a blank look. It’s not that the material I’ve studied is really that hard or obscure. It’s just so specialized. I could explain it, but it would take a white board and at least half an hour to build up even enough of a basis to have a discussion. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not totally thrilled with this realization. I mean, I always knew that, by the nature of the profession, engineers usually work on things that most people don’t understand, or not very deeply. It still bothers me I guess.

As far as my other classes go, there’s really only one that can compare in terms of sheer time invested, and that’s my EECS499 directed study. I’m working with Mark Brehob, along with some other students, to develop the course material for a new Major Design Experience (MDE) class (senior design for those of you that don’t speak engin@umich). It’s going to be EECS473, and it’s going to be a MDE in embedded systems, something that the department is currently lacking. It’s actually pretty sad how little coverage embedded systems receives in the EECS department, considering the wide range of applications for the technology. I mean, as we were all made painfully aware of pre-Y2K, there are computers in everything. Basically, if it has a computer in it, and it’s not designed to be a general purpose pc, it’s some sort of embedded system. I’ll admit, if the course were offered this semester, I probably would have taken it instead of EECS470 (and not just because of 470’s reputation of consuming your existence ). My only regret with my 499 so far is that I haven’t been able to invest the kind of time in it that I would like. I’ve been putting in the time required to get a decent grade, but I haven’t had the chance to really dive in and immerse my self in the material like I hoped I’d be able to. We’ve got a pretty cool development board put together by Intel called the Sitsang that it seems like we could do all sorts of cool stuff with. Oh well, only so many hours in the day, and I’ve yet to find a cocktail of caffeine that can substitute for sleep on a continuous basis.

My other classes don’t really bear mentioning, other than to say that they are universally boring, and just enough work to be an annoyance.

Let’s see, what else… I finally got a new battery for my iPod, so I actually have a working, usable iPod again, which makes me pretty happy. I ordered it from Other World Computing on Monday, paid for 2nd day shipping, and was pleasently surprised when it arrived on Tuesday instead of Wednesday or Thursday like I expected. The other good news is that none of you have to hear me complaining about my busted iPod anymore. (Hey, I heard that collective sigh!)

The bad news is that, as previously referred to, my laptop is acting up now. The backlight will, without any provocation, just turn itself. And no, it’s not the power management settings… what kind of n00b do you take me for? Sheesh. After doing some checking, it appears that this model of laptop has a known problem with the backlight inverter. You can find replacement inverters on the web, but at this point I just don’t feel like it’s worth dropping $100 into a 3 year old machine. Especially when I want a MacBook Pro so much (though I’m not real keen on the name). I’m also kind of interested to see what other Intel based products Apple comes out with. I’d love to see an ultralight, 12″ ‘Book with a Core Duo, but I’m a little afraid that any ultraportables Apple produces will be based on the Core Solo. Having seen some early benchmarks, it appears that some of the large performance gains of the MacBook over the PowerBook are due to the dual core processor that the former possesses, so I’d be considerably less excited about a single core machine.

So on to matters at hand. I promised (at least on my away message on my machine at school ) semi-regular updates while I’m on spring break, so here we go. As some of you are aware, my family and I are going to Hawaii for spring break, which promises to be a good time. It’s actually the first time my family has taken an actual, for real vacation together (we usually head to our cottage up north, which certainly has it’s appeal, but it’s different than going somewhere new).

We’re somwhere over the Pacific right now, thankfully coming up on the end of our traveling for the day. I think we still have another hour or hour and a half to go, but after traveling all day, that seems pretty tolerable. We left home at (ugh) 5:15 this morning to catch our 7am flight out of Lansing. We flew from there to Detroit Metro, which was just a quick up and down flight and pretty uneventful (a good thing in the world of avionics), though there was a pretty good cross wind when we landed, which resulted in one of the harsher landings I’ve experienced. Once in Detroit we had about an hour layover, which gave us enough time to get some breakfast (even McDonald’s is expensive in an airport), and sit around for a little while. Then it was off for our 5 hour flight to San Francisco. Another uneventful flight, though significantly less comfortable than the flight to Detroit, owing mostly to the length. Then, we had a 3 hour layover in ‘Frisco, which was far smaller and less bustling than I expected (the airport; I didn’t get to see any of the city). Then we boarded our flight for Honolulu, which pretty much brings me up to now. I can’t say I really enjoy traveling this long, and I have to say that I’ll take 5 hours in the car over 5 hours in a plane anytime (well, that depends on the car. Van? Yes. Saturn with 5 people? Maybe not.)

Part of me thinks that, while far slower and less efficient, trains and ships might be better solutions for long distance travel than airplanes. Certainly more comfortable (though I suppose one chould always opt for first class tickets if financially feasible). On the other hand, it wouldn’t be possible to travel to Hawaii and back from Michigan in the course of one week by any transportation method other than planes (at least any method yet invented… I’m holding out hope for personal teleporters within my lifetime). So I guess it’s not all bad.

Anyway, so far today I’ve gone through an entire Tom Clancy novel (and reminded me how much I miss reading for leisure, something that I’ve been robbed of since I started college), burned up my entire iPod battery (well, not quite yet, it’s still going, but the battery meter is getting pretty low), and I’ll probably use up my entire laptop battery before the plane lands. Ugh it’s been a long day. My body currently thinks it’s 10pm (after getting up at 5am on 4 hours of sleep, though my watch says it’s 7pm (California time), and when we land it’ll be 6:30 Hawaii time.

Well, that’s all I have for now. Hope everyone that’s on break is having a good time, and that everyone that’s not on break is insanely jealous of those of us that are =)

Ok, so I’m breaking from my usual theme of using post titles that are fragments of song lyrics (ok, so I’m not sure that anyone actually noticed, but anyway…) and I wasn’t actually planning on posting tonight (considering how often I post updates, one could argue that I never plan on posting). Anyway, I just found this awesome Widget for OSX that lets me blog without ever opening a web browser, typing in my account information, yada yada. So this post is both a test post, and just a quick update about something cool I found. Anyway, If you used blogger or anything else that uses the blogger API, check it out here:

http://dashblog.theonelab.com/

I might have to tear it apart and see if I can add some formatting commands to it, but that’ll have to wait until I actually, you know, have time.

… than working on homework (actually, the song lyric is “There’s gotta be more to life, than chasing down every temporary high,” but I’ve had very few temporary highs lately, so I’ll stick with my ending).

So posting at 4:50AM after staying up all night working on a 470 project might not be the best idea in the world. But, since I’m trapped on North until the busses start running again (night ride is too much work), and since (certain) people have mentioned that I haven’t posted in a long time (even if [certain] people copped out on their last post, claiming they couldn’t think of what to write…), and since this is better than doing more of the homework I have to work on, here’s a post.

(I think that paragraph made sense. I hope.)

So basically, my last semester of college is shaping up to be far more work than I could have possibly imagined. I watched several friends go through the joy that is EECS 470 last semester, but I guess I didn’t get a good idea of just how terrible it really is. I mean, I expected that my life would be basically over during the last month or so, as we finish up our final project (design a processor… yay fun!) But I never expected that I would have this much work this soon in the semester.

So pretty much: Lots of work + procrastinating = all nighters working on homework

Anyway, life other than classes has been going prett well (when I’ve had time for life outside of classes). I’m still working at DCO, and savoring every moment of the low stress/relaxed work environment (that I’m sure won’t exist wherever I end up working). I’m still doing the job search thing, doing some interviewing and a lot of waiting. I’ve been staying busy with HKN and Cru, both with general meetings as well as some further involvement with both. It figures that I’d finally decide to get more involved during the busiest semester of my life.

Let’s see here, what else… My birthday was the 29th, and my parents came down and took my sis and I out for dinner, and then later I went over to the AlphaNumero9ers place and was happily surprised to find a very yummy birthday cake and a ginormous homemade VeggieTales card. What can I say, the Numero9ers are awesome!

One thing I’ve really enjoyed this semester has been getting back into the Bible study with the guys in my dorm. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it, and how much of an encouragement to me it was until I went back after a couple semesters off (one due to scheduling conflicts, one due to busyness/laziness). Being able to sit down and talk with those guys, and just relax, learn, and be encouraged is just amazing.

Anyway, it’s taken me ~20 minutes to write this much (my brain is working very slowly and my typing skill is degrading rapidly), so I’m going to get back to work. If I let my brain stay disengaged for much longer it won’t be long before I wake up with my head on my desk an a crick in my neck…