What a Great Week!

Well, it's been a good while (at least I think it has been), since I had some really good things to write in here. This past week, however, seems to have been the best one I've had in a good long while!

The work week went pretty well. We're in the phase of getting our product done and ready to ship! We've been on a pretty aggressive schedule and every milestone that they put out there is always a stretch. At this point my biggest role is to be a branch coordinator. For a while I've been handling the integration of our product in week to week iterations. I get an overview of everything that's going on with it which is pretty cool. The other big ticket item I get to do is work with the product requirements. Most of the time when I talk about requirements I role my eyes and potentially throw a fit. This week I was assigned to actually make sure the flow through was completely done by writing new requirements, contacting other groups to update their specific addition to the product requirements, flowing and linking quality tests, system requirements, design specifications, and use cases, in addition to coordinating with the publishing group of manual updates, and pushing code at the proper time to ensure that it gets into the proper build for testing. That was actually a lot of fun! While that was going on I also had a little modification to one of the interface behaviors for the processor communication. I had noticed that at one point one of our DSPs decided it wanted to take a break and go out to lunch, while the GPP believed that it was still running. This caused the GPP to get into a weird state... Turns out that one of the commands sent to the DSP also sends back an ACK... Looks like no one was ever checking for that ACK... So that was kinder fun to see that problem and fixer right-ish... On Thursday, I pretty much ended the day with doing about half a day of field testing. It was a really successful activity! That was pretty much the week of work. I really thought it was a good week in that regard.

Now, Thursday was my good friend, Dave's birthday. I went out to Dave's place to pick him up (just in case he got a bit too drunk), and we did the usual building-zero thing with Denise; eventually Ph.D Dave came out to join us other Daves and the Denise. Denise and I fed Dave alcohol as much as he would take there, and then Denise (with the desire to clear out her beer fridge) invited us over for less expensive (free!) drinks (since we had $100 bill). It was our favorite waitresses last night at the zero, so I made it a point to find her before we left. She finally got a real job, and it's not too far from where I work, so I gave her my card and told her to come out to lunch with me sometimes... It was really funny to see her piss drunk! Finally, after saying bye to Dana, we went over and hung out at Denise's for a good while, Dave was playing Toe Jam and Earl with the other Dave (that game really scares and confuses me). I ended up talking to Denise's woman, Courtney, about her soon to be new job with AmeriCorps, and started to look through the opportunities that were available to her. All of them sound really interesting, though there are some that I would never really ever want to do (some seem like they can be really sad and just emotionally tough (yes, this is coming from the person that doesn't seem to have emotions)). But I BSed with her for a while, and then she demonstrated how her Lucy Cat played fetch, which was really cool! I don't think I've ever seen a kitty play fetch, so it was cute! At one point Courtney kinder made Dave drink another beer before he had left (don't worry, he was drinking while play Toe Jam and Earl), which he ended up drinking all at once in under a minute (GOOD JOB DAVE!). Afterwards we ended up sayin' goodnight to everyone at Denise's, including a 3/4 sleeping Denise. I took the Dave home, and he actually said something nice! He said something to the effect of that this may have been the best birthday he's had. I think that maybe if Dave's around next year, I'll try to get something kinder bigger and nicer for him. He's got some good friends, so I'm sure that they'd at least consider it!

Friday I was half woken by a call from Courtney who needed some motivation to do work. I ended up stopping over, around like 10:30(?) and stayed for a while. We made tuna melts! Then instead of completely motivating her to do all of her work, we ended up tearing down all the stuff on Denise's wall. BOY she had A LOT of stuff on them, post cards, magazine clippings, posters, tickets from shows. It was a big change to see bare walls in that room and seemed somewhat sad, even though it was fun takin' it down! Finally, I ended up helping (or more of watching and entertaining myself) with Courtney's work... A big long list of people she needed to email, and actually she still had more people to email after we put together that first list... Hopefully she remembered to. After being there I went over to the music shop to get my new noise maker horn (an older yamaha alto sax) overhauled. It's not an amazing horn, but it's not bad either, since I'm a tenor player, I figure I don't need an amazing horn. Carl, the repairman, played it a bit and said that it's one of the better horns of that model that he's had in the shop in a long time. So in about a month and some change I'll get a completely reconditioned Alto Sax... The way that I see it is, I'll have to play about 20 gigs with it for it to pay for itself... That seems to be pretty reasonable (although it sounds like a lot). Carl is a highly recommended repairman around here so I figure that I'll try him out instead of bringing to Jim German (in Pittsburgh). After having him estimate that he'll be taking a lot of my money once the horn is finished, I ended up giving Courtney a call to see if Denise was going to kill her for taking all of her stuff down... That was affirmative, and I called the other Dave (who's birthday was the other night) in for backup... Denise was OK (I think), though she did say she cried a bit. We hung out at her place for a while, I played some Wii with Ph.D Dave. Then later, we decided to go to the East Ave. Festival, which is basically a bunch of bands playing throughout the day. It was cool, Denise's friend from high school was playing in a band there. She got to see them, which was cool. I ended up seeing a few people I knew (both in the crowd and two that were playing). It was pretty fun actually! We ended up stopping at this place called Matthew's for dinner, which had the most amazing Chicken Parm Sammich I've had in a LONG time! Keepin' things goin' once we were done there, we ended up at the Toad to meet up with Dave's roommate, Joe.. Hung out there for a bit, and then I felt kinder-sorta bad, there was some drama between Denise and Courtney, that I like to think wasn't any of our faults. If it was I think one of them would be direct enough to tell us. Courtney stopped at her place on the way out of the Toad with the intent on feeding her fish... Well... dunno exactly what was goin' on, but Courtney and Denise went up for a while, while Dave and I hung out with Court's landlord and his friends, which was actually pretty fun! Even though it was fun, it was getting late and Dave and I wanted to get goin' home... Well... yeah... Denise and Courtney were missing and they're our ride... Didn't work out too awesomely... I can't speak for Dave, but I think that I'll be drinking less (yes every where I went that evening from east ave. fest till the night I had at least one alcoholic beverage) and trying not to depend on others for rides. I feel bad for interrupting plans and whatnot, but I never thought it'd be the plan to hang out at Court's for that long.

Saturday, I did lots of nothing until about 5pm. I played a gig with a band (78RPM). It was a cool one too! It was themed as a 1940's USO show, people came all dressed up period style, and to boot it was in the War Plane Museum's Main Hanger, so we got to play in front of several planes that were in the work of being restored! It was a lot of fun to break out some real old swing standards that I haven't seen in ages! A nice high-energy gig, where there were tons of people dancing and just a really good vibe going! I just sub in 78RPM when they're missing a reed player, but last night several of the regular members were really impressed with how good I sound. That was a really nice positive thing to hear! But the gig ended up with me havin' a bloody lip from playin'. Basically, that's the sign of me needing to play/practice more. I really had a good time with that gig!

So, now that Sunday comes around I really have nothing to do. I think I might go out with friends to see the new Bourne movie, but that's about the extent of my plans. This was altogether a really good week for me! I wish more were like it!

Bits and Pieces Here and There

So I know that I'm bad at updating this thing, but that's really one of the things that helps me be me and I really like being me most of the time!

As of late work has been a big huge mess of paper work. The whole formal software development cycle absolutely floors me (in a bad way) with how much garbage needs to be generated to create a product. The problem as I see it with this formal design process, is that due to the fact we have to maintain some level of competency in our software development we need to follow a software maturity model. My manager told me that every where I'd go they'd have similar setups. I don't believe that for one second. I personally know of several companies that don't go through all this BS. I've been writing quality tests to exercise the requirements placed on the system I'm working with. It's good and bad in some ways. I use the radio more frequently than most people in my group, thus have a better idea of what it is capable of doing and what it isn't capable of doing. It's amazing just how much an engineer can be removed from this cycle in this type of development environment. What can I say? That's just how I work, I don't find it all that helpful for an engineer to work on a problem that (s)he doesn't have first hand experience with.

Other than work, just recently I had my last gig with the Perinton ensemble on Thursday. It was a good deal of fun and a beautiful day out (especially in the shade). I've heard from other members how that gig is usually either unbearably hot or cold; I guess we just lucked out! Afterwards drinks and "dinner-ish" food at the local bar. Some of the people that I play with in this group are absolutely hysterical and great folks to hang out with. I really like this group, though I'd love to see more diversity there. The majority of them are teachers it seems, or have been involved at some semi-professional level with music. That helps to up the quality of the group to have people who are absolutely passionate about playing. The best way I can describe it as, is a different sort of fun than what I've been used to. Many of the groups that I've played in (save the gigs where I sub in, which are usually quite serious) are all about just getting together, maybe learning a bit, and just dicking around and having a good time ripping on one another. This group gives me a more "professional" sense of musicianship, though I still consider myself nothing much more than a glorified button pusher. I just remember all of these comparisons because the last gig that I did with the Perinton group reminded me very much of the type of thing I would do with the Bainbridge Old Time Band.

So now what? I have no idea. It's the weekend though! Don't really have many plans, I have a few fix-it items (not laptops anymore, thank God!) that I should get done. Musical instruments that need pads and cork... A bicycle that had the crank fall off while I was riding (that sucked a bit). I'm sure that I'll eventually come up with other stuff.

Be happy, I'm letting you off with a short post!

Does Technology Really Hate Me, and Other Funstuffs!

So... I think in two weeks I have "lost" two laptops... My main machine (which is a laptop) decided to completely die... toast... I was responding to some stupid work email (from home) and then pooof... it stopped working... done ka put... tried to start it up... nada... took out the battery, and it started ALMOST to a splash screen... then dead... I noticed the charging indicator wasn't lit up... Nope... it wasn't... it was completely dead! Being the nerd that I am, what do you think I did? I got out my trusty set of screwdrivers, and started to disassemble... about 40 minutes later, I had a stripped down laptop... and probably about 30 screws on my desk... lovely... quick visual check and nothing seemed to be bad... I was super convinced it was power distribution related, so I used a meter to trace from the DC input past the lovely bulk caps, and through as much of the power related circuitry that I could figure out... Long story put short, for the discrete ICs that I could find data sheets for... their Vcc/GND potential was next to nothing... lovely... and because of the non-modular nature of this lovely design... I'm near certain that my system board will be replaced... I used to work in the warranty division for a company that had no where NEAR the turn out of HP, and most of the repairs were done at a system level to ensure speed of return to the customer... The old equipment was kept around for refurbished units once it had gone through trouble shooting and regression... I'll have no clue what they did, but really... I don't care that much... It's in their hands, and they already took my money... I just want it to work so I don't have to shell out the cash for a new machine.

Second casualty... IBM laptop... my first real laptop that I could actually use for productivity sakes... it always had a problem (since I got it) where the backlight would sometimes decide that it got tired, and turn off (not in a controlled fashion)... to get it to come back, I'd basically close and open the lid... I never payed much attention to this since well... I knew how to get it to work again... So since the HP lappy broke, I've been using the IBM in addition to the desktop machine I'm currently writing here from... I got home from a friend's place and turned the IBM on... everything came up... the screen was quite dark... so I did my old close/open trick... nope that didn't work... did that a bunch of times... nope... nothing... so... like a good engineering nerd that had been completely fed up with technology, I ripped IBM apart (a much MUCH better serviceable design than the aforementioned HP)... poked at the inverter and boy... when you get 0.0 volts across what I assumed to be Vcc/GND (the thickest flex traces)... that tells you something! I pulled out the cable there, and there is a beautiful clean crack down the center of the stinkin' flex cable! I've always felt flex cables to be quite reliable (believe it or not)... They are great materials for many different tasks... I just wonder if they ever did a failure analysis on this particular component. No big deal... ebay has everything anyone would ever want... I got one... when it arrives I'll probably have the HP laptop back... either way, it was only a few bucks and probably about 20 minutes worth of putzin' around...

So... what's been good lately? I think that lots have been good... I might work in reverse, starting with the earliest news and going to the oldest... Just today I went the the GCCIS commencement. It was alright... I didn't particularly care for the college delegate this year as I have in previous years... but whatever, it's his legacy that he'll have to live with. I saw many good friends that deserve to go across the stage finally do it. It feels good when you know that you now have more of your friends able to start a new life. Of all of them, only a handful of them are stickin' around for more education... it's their choice though... In some ways I'd have liked to earn my PhD, and HP did discuss it with me a good deal... I just decided that I wanted to be exposed to what I can learn from the industry. I'll go back to school, no doubt about it... I doubt it will be for a PhD... I'm industry oriented... I went to RIT for a reason... That reason was to get a job! THAT is why people should go to RIT. If you're considering RIT (and I really don't know who that reads this would be) and open yourself up and say, for example "I might want to do advanced research in..." you might want to rethink your choice in schools... Right now RIT is trying ever so hard to create a strong research program, but this just blows me away... It's a total divergence from the CORE of what made RIT the place to be when they started in a shack in downtown Rochester like 180 years ago (so maybe all that is an exaggeration, you get the point). Don't fix what's not broken!!! So that was my little divergence from the fact that I attended the really long ceremony...

The night before that, Good Dave (I'm Bad Dave), Joe, and myself met up with some Work/FIRST friends, and caught Pirates 3... I liked it... some good plot... some good humor... good effects... I really enjoyed it! So now I'm wondering if a 4th one is in the future... Maybe after I'm done ranting here, I'll ask Google. After Pirates, we went to building 0 (the affectionate name that I as well as many friends call a local bar really named Mac Greggor's) to meet up with a friend of mine, Kim. She was one of the people that walked across the stage today. Sure she's been working for about a year, none the less, this is a bit more closure for her, although she does still have to take two more classes and finish/defend her Master's project... in my opinion that's a bit much... but she's a big girl... she can do what she wants... I was really glad to get a chance to hang out with her. It was also really cool. When we were both in school we talked every now and then, but last night it was really cool. While we were at the bar, I saw Julie as well... I miss her lot... Sure she has a boyfriend... It's not really my call but at least he's much cooler/nicer than her last boyfriend Ali... Thank God... We all did a round of shots, and ended up closing out the bar! Enough of that... let's keep rewinding!

I've been trying to get my car registered in NYS... that hasn't been going too well... lovely eh? At least I got my license and insurance all taken care of though!

Recently I saw Rob Veiders at building 0... I'm glad that I saw him... He's another face that I was glad to see graduating... he deserves it... On a thursday night we had a great time filled with much alcohol... Dave told me not to have any more that evening before he left... I actually pretty much for the most part listened cause he was right... Though Rob and I did play a game of pool that these kids bet a pitcher on... We won, so I just HAD to have my victory drink/toast!

The only other thing that's particularly new is that I now have upgraded from my twin bed, to this queen sized thing that's amazing to sleep on! What can I say? It was about time... the old be is in my "office" type room, and if you ever come and visit, I at least have a bed for ya!

Anyways... I think it's time to head off... I'll post more often as I get angrier, and happier, and well just whenever!

It Can Be Said That No News Is Good News!

I'm not exactly sure of who actually looks at this to see what is being posted and whatnot, but for those who do look at this at times, you'll note that this is the first time posting to this blog in quite a long time. I know that you've been missing the blatant, obvious, and lame comments, but you should know that all this time that I've been "gone" has been for some seemingly good reasons.

Basically I haven't posted because I've been really busy with a group of high school students in a project called FIRST. The basic idea of this project is that a group of high school students build a semi-autonomous robot to play a game in a competition setting. The kids are given 6 weeks, a limited budget and stringent guide lines for safety reasons. My position in all of this? I was and am the electrical mentor. I worked and coordinated about 10 kids to put together all of the electronics on this machine. It's a really great program and a great experience. I participated in this when I was in high school as well. This year was my first year doing it in a long time, but in the coming years as long as they decide to have me back, I'll be trying all sorts of new things! I missed this week at the Boston regional, though from all the positive remarks that I've been hearing, I really wish I could have been there! In about two more weeks I'll be heading to Atlanta with this bunch to cheer them on, help them in the pits, and just have fun! That's the most important part of this whole big thing, that "my" kids have fun. All in all, I'm really glad that I'm doing this and have met all these new people (kids, parents, and co-workers). Each of them has really contributed something to me by teaching me something about myself, or making me feel important in some way. I even feel that I've gotten some really great "adult" friends as well. In the end it's not about the trips or anything, for the number of nights that I was at the school past midnight and even till 3am(!) I could have easily bought/used vacation and payed for my own trips. Like I said, this is more about the experience. It all depends on who you're with, which determines how good of a time you have.

Besides FIRSTing life has been going along well with this whole new work thing. I've been working on a project with a super aggressive schedule. Deadlines are usually pretty rough with it, but at least my manager knows that some of the things that are goin' on with it aren't my fault, so he at least is nice enough to push out the dead lines to a point where I can call them reasonable. I think in these last few weeks of working on the project I learned more about my specific "application area" (basically HMI) than I have for the last long while that I've been there. Some of the stupid features of OO programming are starting to demonstrate how useful they actually can be (like inheritance and polymorphism). It's all good most of the time. At times like this past week, I feel that my manager sometimes leaves me out of conversations that I should be involved in. This is a bit disturbing to me, but I try to not let it get to me, though I was quite terse with him at our last group meeting. To meet the deadlines on this project we've been working weekends over top of the extra time that gets put in on a daily basis. These weekend work sessions are part of the reason that I wasn't able to really attend the Boston FIRST Regional with "my" kids. At least the hard work has been paying off and the people who have been paying attention to this part of the project can see the progress. In my own mind I'm at least doing something that is productive, and somewhat interesting. I do find other places to stick my nose in at times, and learn by watching these other people do their debugging, so at least I have something to side track me when my main project goes nuts and I just don't feel like putting up with it.

The Perinton group keeps on getting more and more serious with each passing week. It's a different kind of fun that I have there. I don't want to say that it's professional, because I don't think that it's intended to be a professional ensemble. I must admit that the last concert we played was not completely all together, and yes this should be corrected in the future, but I do believe that the people there all knew this for themselves and will take it upon themselves to correct these problems. The next concert that we will be playing has even more challenging music. I really love the musical selection with this group at times! Of the pieces selected for performance comes Music from Carmen and Capriccio Italien! These are some amazing pieces and I'm already enjoying working on them! I guess with this group, fun is in the music and the social aspect is only an undertone.

In other generalities, I've heard several bits of good news! A good friend of mine, Hanhan, who tried her hand in the business word for an internship has decided to take a job as an RF Hero! I didn't ever want to bias her, so in talking to her I never really wanted to bring up post graduation activities. This was her concoction, and I'm pumped that she took a job being a nerdy engineer! I love it when good things come along for my friends. In my own news, I, as well as some of my work, has been mentioned in several of the last Theses to finish at RIT computer science department! It's always really exciting to be a big enough part of someones work that they acknowledge you, or even important enough that they end up citing you! Lastly, on a less positive note, I've had a recurring headache lately... It sucks and bothers me lots... I've also had some pain in my back and sides... It worries me a bit, but I'll wait to see if it clears up with some good rest and less stress (which I hope to achieve in the next month).

Doing This Makes Me Hate My Job a Bit More Each Day

So these last few weeks, my manager has given me a task that tries to twist my arm into becoming a "real" software engineer. I like the coding aspect of software engineering, I think that some of the design patterns can be useful and even intresting. This activity that I have been assigned forces me and a co-worker to write things called use cases, which end up being mundane instructions outlining how someone would do things like type in numbers or talk on our radios. This whole side of how things work is obtuse and frustrates me to no end. My co-worker seems like he tries to just find ways to pick out little details and harp on them to show me that I obviously don't know everything about the products... I think at one point we had an argument about if we should word something with "which" or "that". It was a dumb 10 minute conversation, and to keep things actually productive, I just basically said "fine, whatever works, all of this stuff is bull shit anyways". It's amazing just HOW MUCH paper work is generated just to follow procedure. I wish that there were some sort of way I could see how many times those documents were viewed for non-editing purposes (ie: referenced). The straw that broke my back was when I was tasked to write use cases for something that no one totally understands how the feature should work. Through all of the complaints and gripes I'm very happy to just have a job. While I complain a lot, I do think that being there is giving me good career and professional development. The technology that they work on really interests me, I just think that being in the software product development group there isn't where I'd really want to be. I talk to other people and network around the company and they all do things that seem really cool. Even people in my group do things that are really cool. I got a chance to mess around with some of the stuff that they do, but I just wonder if they'll ever really let me have a big part of that project. We'll see... I'll obviously keep workin' there and rock out, like I always do.

FIRST is going well... for whatever reason I decided to help out some bit with the Lego League, for the big FLL tournament at the University of Rochester. Did some help at the info booth that the regular FRC team I work with put up, and I invited about 30 teams to a tournament that we're putting together in Penfield. It'll be fun! I always love meeting people and BSing with them. While inviting teams I met a lot of really awesome teachers there, and some pretty cool college kids (from the UoR that were helping out). On another front, my FRC kids just got their Fuel Cell! Garry (the most experienced electrical mentor) and I have been semi-frantically putting together safety procedure to let the kids use the hydrogen. I've been in contact with many local businesses about actually getting more hydrogen, since we'll have to have lots and lots to prime the fuel pump, and test it, and then actually use it! We hope to have all this in place early this coming week. How cool is that!? Build season is starting to come up, and I really am interested to see how things will go. I'm sure it'll be fun, and I'm sure things will somehow work their way out.

So this week was pretty rough, spending an extra 5.5 hours in work for the substitution week.... As I write this I look outside of my window and awe at the fact that there really is sun out there! Even without the extra 5.5 hours in the week, I still never see the sun during the week. Instead of going to building 0 on Thursday, dave and I went to our friend, Denise's place... That was fun, we watched the Goonies and she fed us and gave us beer! Not too much more to really want! Now I'm going to explore this sun thing!

More Upon Lots

Overall Tuesday turned out to be a Tuesday that was alright. Things are great! Work is starting to become an interesting affair. Harris seems to provide much different process than other jobs that I've had the opportunity to work at. My priority task is to look over and supply support to our integration and test staff. They do a variety of tasks that I have done previously. Now to digress from the previous fact, at one of my previous places of employment, I would have ended up heading this effort for at least a few weeks with the permanent leader shadowing me. Here at Harris, I'm told to just provide support when needed. The thing is, the current group doesn't ask for help! They end up doing things in a long hard convoluted manner, and then end up making the same mistakes that I did. Four hours later I visit them to just see what's up, correct them and find out they've spent the morning working on some stupid task. JUST ASK!!!! When I do end up providing some input, my word is never good enough. They usually have to go to find someone else to validate my opinion. I'm not saying that having me drive this effort would increase productivity by ten-fold, BUT I do feel that I would drive the output and actually get things in front of the important folks earlier, which makes EVERYONE happy.

FIRST is still primarily treating me well. As opposed to my experience in highschool, I've had no breakdowns. I really love working with a lot of the kids. Some need to learn to listen a bit more, and others well, they need to have something to do that will keep their interest. Explaining things impromptu for me is a challenge. I end up needing to go through several iterations of explanation before I can get something that makes sense to me and the person(s) I am trying to explain concepts to. I've taught lab based courses, led a handful of lectures at RIT, but those have at least had a bit of prep time to them. FIRST gives me a chance to work on these kind of situations, and it's a great tool to learn where common misconceptions are when tackling problems of many different kinds. I know that there are many different ideas of how FIRST should be run. I want to see during the build season the effort driven by the students. I KNOW most definitely that these students all work HARD on this project. I want to see just how the work is divided between the mentors and students. I've seen FIRST teams (and absolutely despised them) that have the mentor's and the mentors' companies perform a lot of the manufacturing and assembly, producing polished amazing machines. I really doubt that this team is like this, but only time will tell. One has to remember, that when I did FIRST, our team was only 15 students, 2.5 teachers, and 2 technical sponsors. I was introduced to learning how to use a Bridgeport (and CANS Bridgeport)... And I machined near everything... Basically everyone on the team was assigned to a particular machine. I guess times have changed and such. Although these students aren't near as prone to lose a finger as I or get their fingers cut and tangled in aluminum shavings from a lathe, I can tell that they preserve the integrity and real meaning behind FIRST.

Tomorrow is another rehearsal with the Insane-O Band. I am starting to love this group one member at a time. I do have to admit that the first few times playing with them, I felt awkward as I'm one of about 4 others who doesn't have Music anywhere in my full time position. I mean I guess I could ask to get a new title at Harris, but I think they'd just tell me to go... and find a new job. We have just finished up our first recording session of the year, recording session number two will most likely allow us to absolutely fill the entire CD with enough holiday music to make your ears bleed and your face fall off! The director, Mr. Van Buren is actually getting pretty laid back and throwing jokes my way, starting to make me feel like I'm really part of this group. Of course I haven't practiced any of the music that we've been working on. Most of it is easy enough for me to walk in there, play it and rock. Of course the stylistic problems end up popping out so much more and I find that I end up having to work hard there. It's one of those things that you have to work out with the rest of the group. Speaking of this music junk, I think that over the holiday I'll end up trying to get at least my sax and "nice" clarinet repadded. They both need it lots. Instead of practicing that music I find myself running through stupid exercises that familiarize myself with how certain intervals feel and sound. I've been listening a lot to big band greats (Menza, Frank Foster, Lester Young, Etc). I've actually been trying to put together a collection of big bands that have featured two or more artists cutting one another (cutting contest). This seems to have been an art that has been long gone, I haven't even seen many bands live that participate in this type of obnoxious polyphonic cacophony, which is actually some of the root of this tradition.

So it might be said that "Another One Bites the Dust". Jonathan Lareau whom I've had the pleasure of working with in the Lab for Computational Vision and Acoustics has successfully defended his thesis, "Application of Shifted Delta Cepstral Features for GMM Language Identification". The content was very informative and Jon made it very accessible to everyone. He was the last link that lab had to the original Building 0 night that I had proposed and implemented in my last year there. We'll what happens.

If you've read this far, I think you might be as nuts as I am. That's okay though! I'll be sure to write to this a bit more often to vent so that I don't end up having long long posts like this again!

This Is Foreign and Scary

Well maybe not. I've decided that after forever and then some I've been reading other blogs of insane people and not so insane people on the net. After all this time I give in and decide to start sharing my thoughts and join the ranks of other insane people, which is quite a dangerous idear. Of course this will be a way to better humanity. This first post is just to post something. Hereafter if you get lucky I might be nice and add content to my posts etc. Go on comment... Something...