Jeff's Blog

For Class: Coin 63

2010-12-04T19:05:00.000-08:00

in honor of Friday Cat Blogging

In Berlin

2009-06-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

So this blog definitely did end up dying last quarter, but I'm going to attempt to resurrect it now, for a couple months at least. I'm in Berlin, Germany! I'm working for Deutsche Telekom doing research in security risk management (mostly for IT networks). I'll be here for 2.5 months, and hopefully I'll have some interesting stories to tell. I realized earlier today that I can see the Brandenburg Gate from my office, which, by the way, has got to be one of the sweetest office locations ever - on the 20th (top) floor of the tallest building around for miles (or should I say kilometers). It's a really awesome place to work. Actually, the picture above is from out my window...

As Companies Get Bigger...

2009-04-18T23:25:00.000-07:00

An interesting article: http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/16/as-sales-execs-defect-is-this-the-end-of-an-era-for-google/.

Part of a problem that I think is very interesting - as companies grow, how do you scale in such a way as to keep a small company's flexibility, maneuverability, and feel?

10k

2009-04-05T23:08:00.000-07:00

This blog is not dead yet!

Lisa-Anne and I ran a 10k today in Golden Gate Park. That's actually the longest distance I've ever attempted to run all at once (Lisa's run further)...but we both made it! And in a respectable 52 minutes. However, I'd like to give a shout-out to all the old guys and gals that totally kicked out butts. I sincerely hope that when I'm their age, I'll be able to show up 23-year-old kids who consider themselves reasonably athletic. Oh, and I have a feeling that those older folks probably aren't feeling sharp pains in their knees and walking around with serious limps after completing the race - I guess my body isn't as young as it used to be...

Andy Murray Sucks to Watch

2009-03-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

It's spring break! I'm a couple days late on this post, but better late than never. We got to go see the finals (men's and women's) of the tennis tournament at Indian Wells on Sunday, which was a really cool experience - at least, hypothetically. Okay, okay, it was really neat to get to go, but the matches we saw weren't exactly instant classics...

So here's the recap. First of all, I should mention that it was REALLY windy. Like, huge dust cloud advancing toward the tennis stadium all day long windy. The stadium itself was like a mini tornado (Nataly, my cousin who was with us, was explaining the concept of turbulence in fluids and how it applied to the phenomena we were observing...). Every few minutes, a piece of paper or a napkin or something would fly from the upper decks and swoop across the court, interrupting the point in progress (at one point, the crowd gave a collective "ooooooooh" when a piece of plastic circled its way down into the middle of the court, then proceeded to be launched hundreds of feet into the air straight up, and then carried away out of the stadium). And the players could NOT find their tosses in the wind - each serve took about 2 "false start" tosses. As a spectator way up in the stands, the wind gusts made it feel like we were being punched in the face every few minutes...

Moving along: we started out watching Ivanovic take on Zvonereva for the women's title. I chose to side with Ivanovic (bad choice). She lost in straight sets. Although I should mention that the first set took an hour and 20 minutes - I think that's one of the longest sets I've ever seen! But it wasn't exactly quality tennis - it was more of who the wind made screw up first. I've included a couple pics of Ivanovic, one showing great serving form (notice the straight arm extending through the serve) and the other showing a rare "catch the ball while it's still on the strings" photo (rare for me at least, I've never managed to get a photo of that). Also, one of the cool parts of going to a final is getting to see the trophy presentation, so there's a picture of that too.

Then it was on to the men's final - Nadal vs. Murray. Stupid Murray (more disgust to come) had beaten the Fed the day before to rob us of a classic Nadal-Fed matchup. The match started out somewhat promising, a couple decent rallies and it was on serve...for two games. Then Nadal started punking Murray all over the place, and bam the match was over in a 6-1, 6-2 beat-down. It was over in less time than the first set took for the women's final. So screw you, Andy Murray! That's the second time I've had to watch you play a boring, one-sided, barely watchable match that robbed me of seeing something way better (for example, any other matchup involving any other players possible). At the US Open last fall, I got to watch Murray vs. Wawrinka in a pathetically boring match - under the lights at Arthur Ashe, believe it or not, as the feature match. Anyways, so that's my opinion of Andy Murray - never watch him play, he sucks to watch. Fittingly, the one good picture I got of him was the one I included here. I'm frustrated too, Andy.

(btw, sorry for the awful formatting - I'll get better, I promise)

Happy Early Birthday!

2009-03-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I went to a new dentist up here in Palo Alto (Dr. Boyarsky - endorsement to come). Along with the ordinary stuff, I also had to get a new night guard - I'm a teeth-grinder, and I'd pretty much worn out the one I had. So Dr. Boyarsky's admin called up my insurance to get an estimate of how much it would cost (since these things cost in the hundreds of dollars, and if the insurance didn't cover it, I wasn't getting it). The answer was about $80, so I said let's do it, and that was that. A couple weeks later, I get the bill for $370, pass it on to the insurance, and they come back and say...it's not covered?! WHAT?! Apparently I can only get a new night guard every 3 years - but they hadn't mentioned that when I was deciding whether or not to get one in the first place. Yikes.

So today, after trying to swallow the fact that I was about to pay over 300 bucks for a piece of hard plastic, I decided to call the dentist's office to see what they could do. I didn't have any expectations that this would achieve anything - insurance companies protect themselves again liability for misquoting, and it certainly wasn't the dentist's fault. A few hours later, they call back and say, "Since we told you you'd only have to pay 20%, that's all we're going to charge you." How sweet is that?! This is a legitimately cool guy.

And to top it all off, in the mail this afternoon I received my first birthday card. The cover: "Happy Birthday." The inside:

Dear Jeffrey,

Best wishes on your birthday and throughout the coming year.

Harvey P. Boyarsky, D.M.D and Staff

Going Under

2009-03-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the quarter - the time where I "go under" in a panicky sprint to the finish line. That, by the way, was an awkward combination of two cliches - a forte of mine. Going under is clearly a water reference, and has nothing to do with running toward a finish line...

Moving on: another forte of mine is clearly bad timing, which manifested itself again when I decided to start a blog the week before finals. Kinda tough to build momentum when you don't have time to write anything. However, I fully intend to keep this going, so even if I don't post for the next week (which I probably won't), that doesn't mean it's dead. Okay? Don't look at me like you don't believe me!

The Last 80 Years in EE

2009-03-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

Had an interesting chat today with my advisor - he started explaining to me the history of innovation in the field of electrical engineering over the past 80 years or so. I'll try to recap his thoughts, and I hope I get them right:

So the field of EE was basically created in about the 1930s - prior to that, electrical stuff was contained within mechanical engineering, and prior to that, (at the beginning of the 20th century), a lot of the engineering focus was on civil engineering. In the 1930s, as the world got "electrified," power engineering was the main focus. Then, in the 1950s and 60s, semiconductor devices (especially transistors) started to emerge (I think the transistor was invented earlier, but I guess nothing useful was done with it until then).

Each of the next 4 decades had a dominant new innovative trend and can sort of be summarized by the emergence of a couple major companies. The 1970s witnessed the emergence of companies like IBM and AMD, as transistors became more prevalent in computing. The 1980s were the dawn of personal computing - Microsoft is the obvious one to think of here. The 1990s saw the growth of companies such as QUALCOMM and Cisco - wireless technology and networking. And the 2000s, while not over yet, will probably be remembered for Google - computing services.

So the general trend of innovation in EE seems to be toward higher and higher levels of systems - from transistors and hardcore semiconductor physics to personal computers to networks to services. Keep in mind that I'm not saying that any of the older fields, like semiconductor devices, are lacking in new innovation, but as far as the emergence of new fields, that appears to be the general trend. I wonder what the next logical step will be...you could have a lot of impact if you could predict that!

Reminiscing about Peru

2009-03-04T23:14:00.000-08:00

Today I walked into my professor's office to chat with her about some simulations I'm doing (more to come about that in a later post), and on her desktop was a picture of her family at Macchu Picchu. I said, "Hey, I have that same picture!" She gave me a creeped-out look and asked "you have this picture?" Anyways, once I reassured her that I wasn't a creepy stalker, we got to chatting about our respective recent trips to that fine country, and interestingly we both liked Arequipa the best - it's really a beautiful city, and I highly recommend it. (By the way, the picture at the top of the blog isn't Stanford - it's actually a convent in Arequipa).

So tonight I looked back at some of my pictures from Cruz del Condor, near Arequipa, and I thought I'd post a pretty neat video that I got while we were there ("we" is me and Sammy, btw). I'll admit it's a little nauseating to watch, but I think it does kinda capture the feeling of excitement we got when we were trying to watch all these condors flying around at the same time. I hope that I get to go back someday, and I hope those condors will still be there...