Duality

One phone call will decide everything. Tell you about everything later.

It was my first time playing broomball and it rocked =). Scored one goal and tipped another one in. Pretty good for a rookie.

Too bad it’s my last chance as an undergrad to play. I guess there’s always alumni broomball.

Please, please, if you play a team game like broomball or soccer, spread out. People that have no experience playing team sports tend to run after the ball and end up getting in the way of their teammates. Spread out, pass more, get the ball to the open player, and—most importantly—communicate.

GameStop merges with EB.
Adobe buys Macromedia.

And I haven’t yet bought a DS.

Don’t be upset if I don’t personally invite you to my graduation. I only get six tickets. I’m obligated to attend and I’m pretty sure my parents want to be there, so that leaves three. I’ve also already asked Bigi, so that leaves two.

Ok, the College of Engineering commencement ceremony will be on May 21st. If your name is Lloyd or Alexis, tell me if you’ll be free that day or not (IM, email, or comment). And is it safe to assume you’ll want to go if you’re free? =)

It’s late and tomorrow I need to do some HW, go to the lab, and go to sleep early for my 7-hour, “it was the longest day ever (said Jay)” interview on Monday. So just gonna post links to the picts with a few comments. May tidy it up another time.

Our car taking it easy before the demo. The eye? Yeah, Li drew it on there… instead of like figuring out our other problems. From left to right: bumper, sensor / interface board, CPU board, power / motor drive board.

Stan’s (TA) car. Notice the wooden sensor mounts? While demo’ing learning on Wednesday, his car slammed into the wall and that wooden rod cracked. Today, it totally broke off. He had to replace it.

Last year’s winning car. Group: Fred, Joshua, Donovan (<– in 240). Yeah, we used leftover material from their bumper. It’s styrofoam wrapped with carbon fiber. Rocks. We’ll also be using the same material (epoxy tubing from TAP Plastics) for our next sensor mount.

Team 3’s car on the track. You know, I don’t really know their names. But anyway, it’s also a good shot of the track.

Our car crosses the finish line: 62 – 66 seconds per lap. That’s a little under 1.5 m/s.

Apparently, it’s too slow to really get the crowd going. The guy to the left of the trash can is Professor Fearing.

Luckily, Charlie and Quan’s car knows fast. So fast that I couldn’t frame it correctly. Their car maxed out at 31 seconds per lap—well over 2 m/s. (Track is 80 m long).

Charlie and Quan’s car races Stan’s car. And Stan’s car gets a bump in the rear.

We replaced our motor, rear axle housing, and rear axle and suddenly, all the problems we were having disappeared. Instead of languishing near the bottom of the pack (Round 1 results; fastest lap in seconds), I think we’re now solidly in the middle. Not bad for one day’s work.

With those problems behind us, our speed control is finally solid. It’s kinda funny how some other groups don’t have speed control down yet, but we do. We’ve been in last place for so long, it’s feels weird not being in last place anymore. We’ll be tweaking steering tomorrow. See if we can put on a good show for Cal Day!

Xero hasn’t said much lately, so let me fill you in. He got his wisdom teeth out today—years after it was first discovered to be a problem. The more wisdom teeth form, the harder and more-painful it is to remove them, so he decided to get the knockout treatment (as I did). He was pretty nervous about it yesterday. He probably wet himself. Ok, I made that up, but well, let’s let him refute that himself. =)

My 192 group has to replace our motor, rear axle housing, and speed encoder. And we have to find out why the PWM signal going to our servo is screwing up our speed sensor readings. And we have to reposition our sensors and redo our LUT (look-up table) for steering. Other groups don’t seem to be having the same problems we are, so it’s quite tiring to have to deal with it all the time. It’s really taking a toll on us. We’re all tired. (There are other problems too, which I’ll only discuss in private).

That’s why I haven’t talked about 192 yet. I will eventually, but all you need to know right now is this: 192 demo will be held on Cal Day (April 16th) in the Cory Hall courtyard (2nd floor, through the lounge) from 10 AM till noon.

Hopefully, we won’t embarrass ourselves.

(Hey Xero, I’m home.)

We got it working. We decided to go to NATCAR 2005 (those of you in Davis need to check it out! =)). We’ll have a working car to demo at Cal Day (April 16th; demo from 10 AM – noon; those of you around Berkeley should come! =)). Yeah, my schedule is so hardcore for a graduating senior, but I’m having the time of my life—well, except when the CPU board decides to screw up for reasons the compiler won’t tell us about. I swear I’ll talk about 192 later today. I’ll even remember to bring my camera to school.

I went to the doctor and he said it was just inflammation. It’s not allergies because only one eye is affected; it’s not infection because my eyelids aren’t totally crusty; it’s not conjunctivitis because only part of the eye is affected. (I guess I didn’t mention it but only the left part of my left eye was red). He gave me some steroids—cortisone eye-drops, to be exact—to reduce the inflammation.

I’ve used it twice so far and the redness has substantially decreased. You know, I’m kinda sad. It was cool having a red eye. It freaked people out. =)

Someone remind me to talk about 192 tomorrow (tomorrow being Sunday night).

The talk of the town seems to be centered around “infection” and “doctor.” It’s just red to me. Then again, it’s hard to think about that when my 192 group is so behind.

Btw, WordPress has trouble springing forward, so this post was posted at 3:41 AM…

My left eye has been red for the past week. Like I overworked it and it blew a fuse. Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about it, but it has been a week and the redness in my right eye is long gone. Hey Bigi, didn’t you experience something like this awhile back?

(interviewed on Wednesday, March 30th and Thursday, March 31st)

Unlike the design engineer positions I applied for at Power Integrations and Emosyn, the position I applied for at International Rectifier (IR) is a rotation engineer position. IR’s rotation program is a two-year program where engineers get to work in different roles at different locations. March 31st was the official interview day for rotation engineer candidates. About half of us chose to fly in the day before to have a casual dinner with current rotation engineers.

This interview couldn’t have happened during a worse week. I ended up going to the lab the morning of my flight to LA. And I ended going back to the lab after flying back to the bay area. But I digress.

In the morning, I was interviewed by four people: two from HR (including the mentioned Dave Taylor), the director of IC design (Chris), and Andrea from IR-SA (IR’s partnership with Sanyo Appliances). The interviews were fairly relaxed. My only true technical interview (the one with Chris) went okay. His insistence on conceptual reasoning caused me some problems—though I should know the stuff from 240. In my interview with Andrea, 192 saved me. It wasn’t really a technical interview; he asked me if I had dealt with or implemented various things: high-voltage circuits, IGBTs, PWM signals, regulators, boost converters. The last three are used in 192.

After lunch, we were given a tour of IR’s 8 buildings at their El Segundo site. The buildings were pretty old and unglamorous. I think BWRC’s sexy design has spoiled me.

The whole rotation program feels like an extension of college. The manager of the rotation program, Susan Sanchez, organizes events for rotation engineers to help them get to know each other. It was easy to see that the rotation engineers I met were all friends with each other. It made the place feel like a comfortable place to work.

That’s one thing both Power Integrations and Emosyn lack. I felt out of place at both sites because I was at least four years less-experienced than everyone else. At IR, there would be 15 other newbies along with me.

- – - – -

Random Highlights

Only the candidates from Berkeley were Bachelors students. The rest were Masters. I’m not sure if I should take that for more than face value.
- -
Me: What are those exhaust tubes for?

Guy: (Turns from his work) Solder fumes.
Guy: (A moment after returning to work) I probably should be using them.
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(not-UCB-) Alan: (Holding a PCB) Where are the wires?
- -
Just for the EE people reading this: one of the projects that was demo’ed during the tour was their audio amplifier. It’s a Class-D amp with an LC filter at the output. They said its efficiency is 96%. Gotta be, because the board didn’t even have a heatsink. I was hella thinking about how it all worked out in the frequency domain (LC fixing the non-linearity of Class-D) during the walk back to the HR building. Made my head hurt.

QSK: Alexis has gone crazy. Better send him to the place with padded walls before he sells his GC ;)

prez (Xero’s RM): uh oh. what he do

QSK: sold his DS =(
QSK: and bought a PSP =(

prez: wait…wait…let me go check outside
prez: hmm…seems the world is not ending

QSK: the sky’s red over here… wait an hour then check again ;)

prez: well…we do have to change our clocks a hour ahead soon…..a sign I should have seen coming

- – - – -

QSK: besides, I need to save money so I can restore the balance of the universe by buying a DS =)

prez: yes!

- – - – -

We’re just joking… maybe.

For me, the Star Wars movies have been more than a fad. They’ve been a way of life. Inspiration and entertainment for many many years. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, and for anyone who has ever enjoyed George’s movies, this is for you. Please show your appreciation.

ThankYouGeorge.com

For the increasingly small number of people who have yet to watch this video, do so immediately. If you’ve ever considered yourself a Nintendo fan, then this is for you.

I would apologize, but no one would probably believe me anyway. Last Thursday I had my wisdom teeth removed and was incapacitated for some time. Not to mention this is a really busy quarter for me at school. Anyway, enough with the excuses. I think it’s time I review a game or something. Later today I’ll put something up, I swear! Come on, man. You know I’m good for it. Just gimme a chance… ;)

This quarter DRA170 (Media Theatre) was the one class I was waitlisted for and not sure if I was going to get in or not. But I’ve taken it once before and so I wasn’t too worried about Jose (the teacher) letting me in. So yesterday, the first class meeting, I go up to him and he’s like:

Jose: Hey, Alexis. hows it going?
Me: Great! I’m trying to get into this class again, but I’m waitlisted. What do you think my chances are?
Jose: You? You’re in. No worries, I got you covered.
Me: Sweeeeet!

So, I went to go sit down and then, like one minute later he’s like:

Jose: Alexis, get up here. How would you like to be a group leader?
Me: Umm…what do I need to do?
Jose: Come-on, you took this before, you know what the group leaders do.
Me: …yeah, OK. sure!

So I go from not being in the class to being one of the four group leaders! Essentially, I’m in charge of like 7 other people. I get the cameras, I help them edit, etc. Scary that I’ve been given power, yes, but cool at the same time.

I would like to first state that I am a Nintendo fan and always will be. Most of my friends are huge Nintendo fans. However, now having stated that, I would like to say that Nintendo has really let me down. As some of you may know. I own a Nintendo DS. In fact, I was standing outside my local game store the morning it came out just waiting to get my hands on Nintendo’s newest baby. But now, many months later, I’ve been seriously disappointed in the lack of software.

The number one reason a gaming platform fails is a lack of games, with number two being a horrible design (I’m looking at you N-Gage). Now I’m not saying that the DS had a horrible design, far from it. It has one of the most original designs I’ve ever seen. However, it does have an incredibly lacking library of games. As of today there are only 18 DS games available in North America. 18! After almost six months? If Nintendo really wanted to make this console a winner, they would have waited until the software was actually there before releasing the hardware. And out of the 13 or so other DS titles announced for the US, almost all of them fall into the same category. Puzzle.

Look, I don’t hate puzzle games, in fact some of my favorite games of all time are puzzle games, but honestly, there’s only so much a man can take before he looks at his screen and puts the stylus down. I am that man. As of today I have put my stylus down. Forever. “How can you say ‘Forever’? You might somewhere down the line pick it up again.” Well (and here’s where I get lynched by almost everyone I know), that’s impossible because I have sold my Nintendo DS. I sold my DS, I sold my games, heck I even sold my carrying case. And what did I buy with my newfound riches? That’s right. Sony’s PSP.

Look, Nintendo really let me down with the DS. It had such potential, but with such an utter lack of support, they turned into a cheap gimmick. I won’t deny that it was a sad moment to let go of my DS, but it was not a painful one. These days it did little more than way down my backpack. I had nothing left to play. And out of all the upcoming DS titles that I was even remotely excited about, Animal Crossing DS was the only one, and only because I loved the original, and it was supposed to be online, but it doesn’t even come out till the end of the year.

Sony’s PSP launched with 17 titles. That’s practically the same amount of games it took Nintendo six months to conjure up! And, within the next month, 8 more titles will be released for the PSP. It may be sad to say, but Sony is leaving Nintendo behind in the dust.

Anyway, on the bright side, I can now bring you PSP reviews, and when Quadoshock gets around to buying a DS, he can take over the DS reviews. There are numerous things about the PSP that have me as giddy as a school girl, but I’ll leave them for another day. For now, let us all mourn in the loss of friend, but know that in his ashes, a power greater than he could ever imagine has been born.