Assorted Updates
I’ve been planning on putting up this set of updates for a while, but I’ve managed to get delayed by…stuff. Like killing zombies (more on that later). Anyways, here’s some updates:
- This summer’s been the summer of bar trivia so far. Well, at least on Monday nights. We’ve (where we is James, Ariel, Jim, me, and whoever else feels like showing up) been heading to John Harvard’s for bar trivia on a fairly regular basis for the past nine weeks or so, and have managed to win four times and come in second another time. We also had a winning streak of three weeks, which was pretty sweet. Good times, and maybe we can continue doing it during term, what with all the grad students around and their “free time”…
- Work’s been a bit dull lately, even though the stuff I’ve been looking at is fairly interesting. I’ve been doing a lot more work in lab, and have basically turned myself into a human load-pull system while trying to get a bunch of data for one of the amplifiers that we’re trying to ship out to a customer. Haven’t nailed down an exact thesis topic yet, but it looks like my work with the current amplifier might lead to a nice thesis dealing with large-signal stability analysis issues (which in turn means dealing with some crazy chaos/non-linear dynamics stuff). There’s also some stuff floating around that has to do with analyzing some breakdown issues we’re having at RF drive (i.e. not traditional DC off-state breakdown analysis type stuff), but I’m not really a big fan of dealing with grungy device physics and obscure terms like “thermionic field emission”…
- Got Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 last week on the day it came out because of the ridiculous reviews it received. It’s the first time that I’ve ever bought a video game on its release date, and it was well worth it. Lots of old-fashioned zombie-killing action (everything’s a weapon!), and the plot isn’t half-bad so far. It’s impossible to finish all of the side missions on the first run-through, and it seems like a lot of the game’s value comes from replaying it in “infinite mode”…
- Sam (female one, not my roommate), James, Riad, and I had our fantasy football draft this past Monday, and since there were only six teams in our league, we wound up drafting 25 roster spots each. Which was complete chaos. With the last pick, of course, I had to take the Niners defense. Although I’ll probably never use them in any matchup this season, I simply had to take them for the entertainment factor. You probably don’t care, but I’ll put down my first ten picks here anyways: Tiki Barber, Edgerrin James, Carnell Williams, Hines Ward, Carson Palmer (oh yeah, bum knee and all), Reggie Wayne, Donovan McNabb, Tony Gonzalez, Andre Johnson, and Nate Burleson.
- I’ve had a lot more time to watch A’s games lately, and it’s been fun. The A’s have been raking, having won 15 of their last 17 games, and 17 of their last 20. They’ve also managed to win 15 straight games against the Mariners, which is absolutely ridiculous for any divisional rival, and they’ve got a 6½ game lead in the division over the Angels and Rangers. Guys like Milton Bradley, Joe Kennedy, Jay Witasick, and Bobby Crosby are finally coming off the disabled list, and Eric Chavez, Nick Swisher, and Esteban Loaiza look their old selves again. Regardless of all of this, the A’s still seem to be getting short shrift from most of the national media, which is perfectly fine by me. It just means that they’ll be under the radar going into October, which is a pleasant change from playoff years of past when the spotlight’s been on them for most of the second half of the season…
That’s all that I can think of for now. I might add some more stuff later if I can think of anything else…
EDIT: Managed to find this article by Ann Killion in the San Jose Mercury News which states the exact same thing about the A’s being under the radar. The surprising part is that apparently they’re not even being noticed in the Bay Area, where most people are still obsessed with Barry Bonds…