Duality

(Five thoughts gathered during my first week of working full-time and living on my own.)

Ordeal
Nothing in school can prepare you for the 8-to-5. Maybe your worst schedule was 8 AM to 5 PM, but no one said you had to stay awake for the whole nine hours. No one said you even had to show up. The challenge of work is not just staying awake, but staying functional throughout the day. Each day in the past week, there was always some point where my brain would crash and I’d sit in front of my computer like a zombie, randomly clicking around.

Needless to say, the day is long—very long. By the end of the day, all I want to do is eat then sleep. Don’t want to pick up anything from the store; don’t want to go anywhere; don’t want to take care of any business. Eat. Sleep. That’s it.

Timeless
But it’s not that simple. I need to wash dishes (from lunch), “cook” (boil and microwave, hah), and wash dishes (from cooking and eating). And then shower, maybe. And then sleep, preferably before 11 PM. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s amazing how fast time slips away.

I finally understand why people stop playing games when they get older: they just don’t have the time. In the past week, the only “me” time I had was the hour-and-half at Milpitas Golfland ($6 unlimited play at the arcade Wednesday nights) on Wednesday. And I had to sacrifice a couple hours of sleep and the chance to shower for that. I remember talking with Bigi a couple weeks ago about how we’ll have so much free time after we start working. Leave at 5 PM and the rest of the night is mine, right? I can’t believe how wrong we were.

Prospect
The transition felt so abrupt. One day I was still a student slacking at home during the summer. The next, I was working the 8-to-5 and living on my own. Like a high-school player drafted into the NBA. That’s basically what I am.

I am expected to eventually contribute to my group—a group which currently consists of my manager and a senior-level designer (Masters + 5 years experience, but way ahead of his time). My cubicle is in a high-traffic area. I overhear conversations all day and don’t understand any of it. There’s so much for me to learn, I wonder if I’ll ever be good enough.

Do you understand my fear? They spent their first pick in five years on me. I don’t want to turn out to be the next Kwame Brown.

Escape
I left the TV, games, and internet at home because I didn’t want any distractions. How ironic that having nothing with me has become the biggest distraction of all.

I was wrong to leave everything from my world behind. With a transition as big as this one has been for me, I need all the familiar faces I can get. Even if they cause me to stay up late. Even if they cause me to sleep in. I’ve realized that I can’t relax without them. I feel anxious, worried, and lonely. My mind jumps from one to-do to another. Make sure to cook the leftover vegetables. Forward mail to landlord. Fill out forms for work. No escape.

Endgame
I worry that my life will be like this from now on. Work, cook, clean. Day in, day out. In my mind, I see this endless expanse. Flat, monotone. How does it all end? Does it end at all? It’s like a MMORPG. There are no rounds, no stages, not even a destination. It continues forever.

And you can play the rest of your life and not get anywhere. That’s what scares me. School was so guaranteed. Survive and you reach the next level. Survive X levels and you reach the end. It was easy to focus on a goal like that.

It’s only been a week, but it felt so long. Will I make it past one month? Six months? One year? Two years? This is an awful lot of worrying for such a short time, isn’t it? Maybe sitting on the bench has given me too much time to think.

I’m home again. Found out that I’ll need two forms of identification to be put on the payroll and I only had one with me, so I figured that I might as well go home for a day or two. I didn’t expect to be home again so soon, but I must say it’s nice to be back.

My apartment is an utter void. 552 square feet (I think?) with only a, two folding chairs, and cooking stuffs. Yeah, Office Depot held out on me because the billing and shipping addresses were different. And even though I called them several times, I didn’t find out until Friday night. Now that’s taking care of business.

So there isn’t much to do at my apartment—and with no desk, I can’t move any entertainment items into my apartment (though I might not move much anyway; more on that another time). Prepare food (read: microwave / rice cooker, for now), eat, wash dishes. That’s it. Thursday wasn’t that bad because I had dinner with friends and I was tired from the 15 or so trips it took me to move all the stuff from the car to the apartment by myself. Friday was when the boredom really set in. Lots of calling Office Depot and waiting followed by more calling Office Depot.

I was bored out of my mind. Seeing the terrible condition of the games at EHGL/BHGL/SJGL didn’t help. beatmania CORE REMIX with a turntable that felt like raking muck and drummania V with broken sticks tied to the machine. That’s the stuff that makes grown men cry.

Is driving 20 miles to MGL or SVGL worth it?

If you’re reading this, I’m already on my way to San Jose. If you’re reading this from TVA, I’m already there.

The next few weeks will be interesting: working, living on my own, and “cooking”—cooking in quotes because I’ll basically boil or microwave everything. My meals will probably suck for awhile. But I will have good rice. My parents got me a sweet Zojirushi rice cooker (the Micom fuzzy one).

Ah, I’d write more but it’s time to go. I need to beat the Office Depot delivery guys to my apartment. Don’t want anyone running off with my desk, drawers, and chair!

Xero will be holding down the fort until I start working (and can get online from the office). Be nice. =)

Yesterday was Jay and Alan’s first day at work (Linear Technology). “How was day 1?” I asked Jay on AIM.

“hard to stay awake”

- - - - -

Edit: Jay’s thoughts after day 2…

“you’re gonna love waking up early
i’m glad it’s friday tomorrow”

I’ve been gearing up to start work lately. Got the keys to my apartment a few days ago. Bought a new jacket and a set of dress shirts. Almost got a new pair of shoes (the store didn’t have my size). Slowly learning how to cook; still at the chopping and washing part.

New design has taken another few days off because of the above and because of all the games I’ve been playing lately. Maybe tomorrow off too? It’s the first (and most-important) day of Circuit City’s $10 video game clearance. Baten Kaitos for $10! Check your favorite deals site for more details.

I’m posting this reply here because I hate having to log in just to comment.

Lloyd, that’s what happens when you stand with the two tallest Asians in the world. Man, did I get short-changed… oh, the pun’s so bad. Since when was Abraham taller than Aaron?

The weird thing about the UC Davis COE graduation was that it was so much nicer than the Berkeley graduation—indoors, plenty of space for guests, free parking, live band—yet it lacked the energy and enthusiasm. It was utterly devoid of hijinks. Only a couple of paper airplanes thrown around (as opposed to the beach balls and soft frisbees thrown around at my graduation), no fancy names (e.g. Jay “hey, let’s go paintballing” Lin), no on-stage theatrics. I really wanted to yell out “Bigi! Hunter pose!” but not when everyone else was stoic-ly walking across the stage.

But anyway, congratulations, Bigi! And onto the pictures:

• Waiting for it to start. You see the two largely, empty rows in front of me? One group reserved it all. Bastards.
• Walking in.
• Overview. Features: live band, screens.
• Bigi gets in line. And is still in line.
• Bigi on-stage. It’s a picture of two brothers (also shown above).
• Bigi’s cap design: bow and arrow.
• Let the celebration begin! Actually… let’s get out of here first. (Bigi: can I go yet? I’m thirsty =))
• Best cap design ever: super mushroom. Runner-up: airplane.

I have pictures from Bigi’s graduation, but I won’t post them yet because it’s already 1:30 in the morning due to a game of Magic that ran longer than intended. I’ll post them tomorrow—tomorrow being later today.

So, here’s basically what I did for the past four days: playing Magic, trading Magic, and reading about Magic.

Today, I opened Photoshop for the first time since I started Magic Online. Feels like forever.

I have arrived. And it feels good.

Well, the outrageous price of theme decks and boosters doesn’t feel good. (btw, Xero, took me a few tries to figure out how to use those trading bots. But in the end, I scored 32 useful commons for 1 event ticket)

“Did you see the headline of the San José Mercury News? Steven Jobs to change to Intel chips.”

“That’s old news, Dad.”

Apple dumps IBM for Intel.

The scary part about this decision is that it does make some business sense, given that Apple has laid the groundwork for transitioning current software to the new hardware. Let’s face it—the PowerPC 970 (aka G5) was slapped together. IBM didn’t devote the necessary resources then, why now? IBM is designing the CPUs for all three next-gen consoles. It has no need to deal with Apple anymore. Also, Apple could piggyback off of Intel’s motherboard designs. In this age where your GPU is as important as your CPU, wouldn’t it be nice to have PCI-Express?

Intel must have made the deal really sweet for Apple because it’s widely known that AMD CPUs are currently faster than Intel’s. I hope Apple doesn’t use the Pentium 4 or a CPU with a similar architecture. Among CS/EE academia, the Pentium 4 is the biggest joke.

-

Edit: I’ve thought about it more. It makes a lot of business sense, actually. In the keynote, Jobs said that they have been maintaining an X86 port of Mac OS X for 5 years. 5 years ago, Motorola was struggling to improve the G4; now IBM is letting the G5 languish. These stalls in performance are definitely hurting Apple’s image.

The screennames have been hidden to protect the weak.

[Seigi]: Warning of ‘Quadoshock’ not allowed.
[Seigi]: haha

Quadoshock: owned

Wednesday was my last research meeting. Made a few final edits to the documentation before turning in my work. And so ended my direct involvement with the MCMA project at BWRC. I doubt that will be the last time I go there though. Artem—the guy who will be taking over my position—will probably need at least a little help understanding my work. There wasn’t really anyone to help me when I took over Artem’s work (well, I took over for Ted, who really didn’t do much; long story), so it took me forever to get going. Yeah, I took over Artem’s work and he’ll be taking over mine.

The goal of the MCMA project is to create a multi-carrier, multi-antenna system. As far as I know, the theory behind using multiple carrier frequencies and multiple antennas for communication networks is well-established, but so far, no one has created a system that makes use of it. The MCMA hardware consists of multiple, single-antenna boards. Each board has an FPGA, an ADC/DAC chip (analog-to-digital, digital-to-analog), various input connectors, and an RF daughter-card with an antenna and PLL. (Thank you, Wikipedia, though don’t think I don’t know what each of those do =)). My job was to program the FPGA to handle all of those components and do basic testing.

Artem left me a bunch of different files. Each file was tailored for a single test: one file to test the ADC, one file to test the DAC, etc. So each time I wanted to test something else, I had to load a different bit file onto the board. Not very elegant. He also chose to program the ADC/DAC by repeatedly sending commands. Not very elegant either.

I integrated the functionality of all the different files into a single file and created a user interface (using buttons and jumpers) to change settings on-the-fly. I also changed the way the ADC/DAC was programmed to a state-machine-based system (hello, CS majors =)). Instead of repeatedly sending commands, it would only send commands in reponse to user input.

Screenshots from Simulink

• System overview (same as above)
• Signal subsystem and jumper interface
• My pride and joy: ADC/DAC control subsystem
• Individual state machines within the ADC/DAC control

if (can’t play Magic Online) {
   sleep;
}
else {
   play Magic Online;
}

So, my new computer’s here (using it right now, in fact; PowerMac G5 DP 2.0 Ghz), but something strange happened a few hours before it arrived.

My house has this hallway with a cut-out that leads upward to a skylight. For as long as I could reach the ceiling, I’ve been running down the hallway and jumping to see how high I could reach. Friday afternoon, I was walking down the hallway and decide to make a conservative jump. In the air, I lightly tapped the edge of the wall that goes up to the skylight. Once I landed though, I noticed that my right shoulder was feeling weird. It didn’t have the strength or stability that it had before I made the jump.

Perfect timing. In a few hours, the computer would arrive and my right shoulder was messed up.

Thankfully, I still had enough strength in it to get the tower on my desk. But what happened to my shoulder? It wasn’t until the next day that I noticed my right collarbone was slightly out of place. How did that result from my conservative jump? Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’m taking this incident as a not-so-subtle hint that I should spend more time being active and less time sitting in front of the computer.

Help guide the future of Duality by answering the following questions. Sorry, no iPod drawing.

Questions

1. What browser do you predominantly use? (specify browser, version, and platform)
2. Do you have a broadband connection?
3. Do you have JavaScript enabled?
4. Would you be willing to enable cookies (assuming you have them disabled like me) for alternate designs?
5. Would you prefer a design that is optimized for 800×600 or 1024×768?
6. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

The last ques… I mean the second-to-last question is the most important.

I’m going to keep this quick because it’s already past midnight (had to hack the timestamp to prevent the NATCAR post from being pushed off). Graduation was long and hot. I got sunburned =(. The College of Engineering at Berkeley is so large. We were all dying before the PhDs were finished walking.

All in all, it was cool—not as cool as NATCAR, but cool. Lots of funny names (Jay “Hey, let’s go paintballing” Lin) and on-stage celebrations. My parents, Lloyd, Alexis, and Bigi were there. Bigi wasn’t wearing his orange shirt.

(I know a lot of you are going to be disappointed, but I’m not going to post any pictures of me with other people)

Photos

• Backstage. Moo, where’s my cattle prod?
• Lots of people: 1, 2. Notice how far out the graduate section extends.
• Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google
• My awesome cap design. White paper on top of cardboard for a clean, raised look. (don’t recognize it?)

It rocked. NATCAR 2005 was probably the best day of my undergraduate career. It was competitive, yet there was a comradery among the teams that crossed school allegiances. We cheered on our teams, their teams, the fast cars, and the slow cars. In the end, a team from Berkeley won the competition, but it was hard to leave that place feeling like anything but a winner.

Final Results

1. 34.X seconds: Bryan, Jerry, James (Berkeley)
2. 35.X seconds: Quan, Charlie (Berkeley)
3. 38.1 seconds: Kenny, Philip (Davis)
4. 39.2 seconds: Dexter, Li, Jonathan (< that's me; Berkeley)

(full race results… not updated yet, but will eventually be there)

- - - - -

(Apologies for the grainy-ness of the photos. Something about the lighting didn’t agree with my camera.)

Photos

• Our car: the drifter (same as above). Notice the tape on the outer part of the back wheels.
• All the cars lined up: 1, 2, 3.
• Dual-motor car (rear wheel steering; front wheels don’t even touch the ground): on display, on the track (1, 2).
• Quan and Charlie on the track and checking results. Their car had a remote; in Quan’s (white shirt) left hand in the first photo.
• It’s a table!
• Two test tracks for groups up next.
• The track. And the crowd (Bigi’s in the orange).
• Back in Berkeley, saying goodbye to the lab: 1, 2.