Ideas aglore

Ok, so here is an idea I had yesterday. You know how you go to a movie and are pretty much forced to sit and watch the story some guy came up with? You have absolutely no say whatsoever in how events unfold. So to appease the control freak in me, I came up with this concept where the storyline is interactive. So here is how it would work.

You and sit through lets say 30 mins of the movie. At the end of the 30 min period you would be offered a choice(s) in the story line. Like, “If you would like the hero to fall off the cliff, go to screen 1″ and “If you would like an astroid to hit just beneath the cliff thus saving the hero, stay here” So at this point you will get out of the theater and go to the screen you choose. There the story line of your choice continues for another 30 mins or so, and you have your next choice.

It would be hell to write a storyline for such a movie and heller to keep walking from one screen to the next. But it would be fun.

More on my idea spree later. A pop up warning message on the simulator beckons me.

Stimulating Simulations

I am going back to the drawing board and starting over with my device design. Yesterday I got hold of a 2 week license for a simulation software. Pretty pricey stuff but thats the upside of interning at a company that has money to burn. I have used this software earlier so there would be little learning to do, but I am looking forward to it. The ability to bounce a billion ideas off a partial difference engine somehow brings out the creative side of me. I dont know why. The last time I ran these simulations I came up with ideas for a few journal papers. Well only two of those ideas meterialized, but it was worth it. Wonder what I will come up with this time. Hopefully it will be a design of a device that works

And thats rock bottom

So I was all fed up with being single and stuff, so one of my friends set me up on a blind date last evening. I protested this ridiculous idea but had to give when faced with death threats from him. I swear this is by far the craziest thing I had ever done.

It actually turned out to be much more fun than I thought. We had absolutely nothing in common. Nada. Zero. Universe-Universe. So after the first 15 mins or so of attempting to find common ground, we gave up, and decieded to spend the rest of the dinner figuring out why on Earth would our common friend would have thought that we even stood a chance. Have to say nothing lightens up a conversation like trying to list “Top 10 reasons we will never hit it off.”

oh sleep where areth thou

Crazy times are here. I am in the midst of a design revision, finishing the book chapter, and fishing for my thesis ideas at work. On my time off I have been trying to catch up with friends, putting out fires at home, and trying to get a life. I didnt plan on being so occupied and miss out on blogging. I will try to be more regular with this.

On a different note, has anyone seen my sanity around?

What a day

Phew.. the day has finally come to an end and not a moment too soon. I had a productive day after such a long time. I cannot even recall the last time I got so much done.

I met a wonderful friend of mine for lunch. Inspite of the fact that we are in the same department, we are meeting after nearly 3 months.

Had a semi-productive meeting with my advisor. Got the oh-so-useful and wise “Do whatever you want” replies to all my questions.

Screamed and yelled at my team of undergrads for well over 30 mins. It felt so good and so right. I even threatened to block their graduations if they dont whip up to shape soon. No, I dont have any say over their graduation process, but they dont know that. I think I was too harsh on them, but what the hell. They are idiots and they deserve it.

I completed a long overdue report to my research sponsors. My adviser had exressed in no uncertain terms that he will be *mad* if I didnt get it done by this evening. He told me this a week ago. I remembered it only last evening. Anyways started working on it this morning, and realized that I dont have any good text, figures, or data from the past reports that I could recycle here. Started from scratch, and 11 hours later I have a 44 page report. God I am good.

Now for some well deservered rest.

Second Guesses

Today I had lunch with one of my better friends at the U. She is by far the brightest person I have ever met. We were discussing about my device and she offered some insights into this. Now I am not all that sure that I want to start on a new design from scratch. I think I should sleep over this thing, and make a final decision in the morning.

Just Say No

Yesterday they conducted a blood donation camp at our University. I try to donate whenever I can. Got to to even out my karma somehow right? Anyways, so I get there and they are jam packed. They had to squeeze two beds together so that they can save the space between those the two to accommodate one more bed per row. I got to my station, and there was this really cute and adorable female on the bed next to mine. After nearly 10 mins and a few smiles, I figured what the hell and tried to strike a conversation. The genius in me came up with the worst line ever. I turned to her and said, “isn’t it sad that I get to lie next to a cute female in the same bed, only to be surrounded by a whole bunch of doctors in a well lit room?” The next thing I know she was having seizures. I swear, I am not making this up. Seriously, don’t you think a “No” would have sufficed?

Undergraduate Researchers

Its official now. I have a whole bunch of useless morons working for me. I had let my undergraduate research team do the basic data processing for me for the last year or so. Call me stupid, but I trusted that these guys can handle a simple task like that and never bothered to cross check their procedure and the computer codes they wrote.

Late last evening I started working on the paper that was due day before yesterday, and I needed some new plots of the data. I opened the folder with the codes and worms everywhere. This is by far the most pathetic piece of data analysis I have ever seen. Their procedure requires so much human intervention, that the final data is error ridden. I spent the last 5 hours re-writting all the data analysis programs from scratch, and guess what? My results are entirely different now.

I am torn between crying, yelling, and wanting to kill my group.

The cat is out of the bag

This afternoon I finally told my supervisor at my internship that my devices dont work, and I think there might be something fundamentally wrong with their design. He took the news better than I expected. He grilled me for over 2 hours as to what is wrong, and what I propose to do about it. Considering he has spent over $100,000 on me over the last 7 months, I think he is totally in his right to ask me all those questions.

I feel bad that I have let him down. All this time and money, and hardly anything to show for it. Anyways, such is life. We are both ready to put the setbacks behind us and move forward with a different approach.

Problems with the blog?

Blogger is supposed to email me whenever someone comments. That way I know when to check my blog. (Why else would I read my own blog?) For the past 2 days I havent gotten any intimations of new comments. Is anyone else having the same problem?
I am not sure if the problem is with blogger or with my email. I run my own email server, and it could be the one acting up. Got to check the logs, but thats way too much work. Hmm.. perl scripts would probably be the way to go. I will do that later tomorrow.