Ragemaster

Since upgrading my Ubuntu installation, I got plenty of compile warnings when compiling TinyOS applications.  To fix this, I just decided to reinstall TinyOS.  It can be a pain to install and each time I do it, I've got to look for resources on the internet and try a couple different things to get it working.  I'll try to keep this updated whenever I discover something new or have to upgrade or reinstall TinyOS again.  Here are the references I found to help me compile this:

All Platforms:
Installing TinyOS 2.0.2

Ubuntu:
5 Second Fuse - TinyOS Installation
Install TinyOS-2.x On Ubuntu << Udin Harun

I also got it running on my Leopard Macbook using this:
Installing TinyOS 2.x on Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard)

This worked for me on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.  I did have a previous install of TinyOS that I removed, but some stuff may have been left behind.

1.  Add the following line to /etc/apt/source.list:

deb http://tinyos.stanford.edu/tinyos/dists/ubuntu hardy main

Currently, there isn't any repository for Intrepid Ibex, but this seems to work fine.

2. Update the repository cache from a terminal window:

$sudo apt-get update

3.  Install TinyOS packages:

sudo apt-get install tinyos tinyos-avr tinyos-msp430 nesc tinyos-tools

In my case, "tinyos" caused a warning since it was an abstraction for several packages.  I installed "tinyos-2.0.2".

3a.  (Iris Support): Install TinyOS from CVS:

I also wished to have the latest TinyOS version from CVS since it seems those provided via the Stanford repository did not support the Iris mote.  To install from CVS, open a terminal window to the installation directory of your choice and run the following:

$cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos login
$cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos co tinyos-2.x
$cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos co tinyos-2.x-contrib

tinyos-2.x-contrib is a library of user-contributed code that can help in designing your own applications.  If you installed as su, you may want to change the permissions of your tinyos directory if you wish to compile anything in the apps directory or modify any TinyOS code:

$chown -R <uid> tinyos-2.x

4. Add the following environment variables to ~/.bashrc:
export TOSROOT=/opt/tinyos-2.x
export TOSDIR=$TOSROOT/tos
export CLASSPATH=$TOSROOT/support/sdk/java/tinyos.jar:.
export MAKERULES=$TOSROOT/support/make/Makerules
export PATH=/opt/msp430/bin:$PATH

Depending on the directory and version you have installed, you may need to change TOSROOT to reflect the correct directory.

5. Install TinyOS Java Toolset:
I had issues with this one: you may not have to do this step if you just use the tinyos package provided by the Stanford repository.  However, I installed via CVS and had to install the TinyOS Java toolset manually.  Ensure that you have performed Step 4 and modified your .bashrc file before proceeding.

First, from the terminal, run:
$sudo tos-install-jni

This will install the Java Toolset into your Java directory.  For some reason I had Java 1.5 (5.0), Java 1.6 (6.0), and OpenJDK installed on Ubuntu.  Oddly, javac pointed to Java 1.5 and the java command pointed to OpenJDK, which was causing errors when running TinyOS Java apps like TestSerial.  To fix this, I removed Java 1.6 and OpenJDK since these seemed to be causing nothing but problems and just about everything runs on 1.4 or 1.5 (including TinyOS Java libraries).  Now java and javac point to Java 1.5 (Hopefully doing this didn't toast some other application).

You can then compile the TinyOS Java libraries by running the following in the terminal:
$cd $TOSROOT/support/sdk/java
$make

6. Install Graphviz
This step seems to be optional, but you need it if you want to run the Oscilloscope application.  In a terminal, run:
$sudo apt-get install graphviz

TinyOS wants an old version of Graphviz, but Oscilloscope seems to run fine.

7. Check your TinyOS Installation:
From a terminal, run:
$ tos-check-env

Running this, I have received errors about the Graphviz version, but the Oscilloscope application runs fine with the newer version.

To test your installation with Telos-based motes, try:
$ cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/apps/Blink
$ make telosb install.0 bsl,/dev/ttyUSB0

To test with Iris motes, try:
$cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/apps/Blink
$make iris install.0 mib510,/dev/ttyUSB0

To test the serial connection with Telos-based motes, try:
$cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/apps/tests/TestSerial
$make telosb install.0 bsl,/dev/ttyUSB0
$java TestSerial -comm serial@/dev/ttyUSB0:telos

To test the serial connection with Iris-based motes, try:
$cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/apps/tests/TestSerial
$make iris install.0 bsl,/dev/ttyUSB0
$java TestSerial -comm serial@/dev/ttyUSB1:iris

It seems that with the Iris, applications must be installed via the mib510 board (ttyUSB0) and data can be retrieved by accessing the mote itself (ttyUSB1).

7.  Issues
In addition to the Graphviz errors, for some reason the motelist command does not see the mib510 interface board or the Iris.  However, when I install to /dev/ttyUSB0 or listen to /dev/ttyUSB1, the installation works fine.  motelist does recognize the Iris on OS X, however.

As with EmNets over the summer, the trip to SenSys this week was an experience.

The sessions went from Wednesday through Friday so my adviser, the other student in our group, and I left Tuesday afternoon and got back late last night.  The weather in Williamsburg sucked when I left and it sucked when I got back, but it was nice in Raleigh.  I also managed to get in my weight routine and the bike/elliptical every day while I was there, but I had to get up early to do it.  The whole thing really wore me out and I was asleep by ten every night.  Of course, I got up before seven to start my routine and kept awake with the terrible coffee they had.  Hard to believe I drink enough coffee now to have preferences (darker roasts are better).

Overall, the whole thing was kind of weird.  Nearly everyone there was foreign -- despite most schools being from the U.S., almost all the students and professors were not.  I guess this was to be expected -- it was like taking a 200 person sample of the world population and putting them in the same room.  A plurality were Chinese, a lot were Indian, and there were only a small number of Europeans and Americans.  Since my adviser and the other guy in the research group were Chinese, I found myself hanging out with everyone else speaking in Chinese.  The group meals we had and conversations during the break were kind of awkward since they would speak some in English and then just suddenly switch to Chinese.  For example, the first night we went out (to a Chinese restaurant of course), I was the only one of eight that used a fork and knife.  I should probably start learning Chinese so that I can at least pick up some of it.  My adviser encouraged me to talk to people during the session breaks, but it's tough when many aren't speaking a language you can understand.

Asides from the demographics, the other thing that made it weird was the atmosphere.  These are some of the top people in sensor networks and the whole thing seemed so ... unprofessional.  The attitude of everyone and atmosphere seemed so relaxed and informal - at the end of a few presentations there were a few arguments between the presenters and a questioner.  Nearly everyone was in typical student-type clothes and the faculty were typically attired, and it seemed as much a chance to have a good time as it was to show off your work.  Some of the UVA guys came in one morning musing about how drunk they got the night before.  The closest thing I can compare this to is NCAAs for cross country.  With this conference and the NCAA meet, the idea is the same: the best schools come to show off their stuff, but the atmosphere at NCAAs was extremely professional and focused.  In both cases we had a banquet with everyone that was attending, but at NCAAs everyone was subdued, had their "game face" on, and kept conversation to those within their team.  In contrast, at SenSys, there was wine on the table and everyone was nearly out of control by the end.  Somehow, I expected something a little more formal, but I guess that's the appeal of academia -- you're given a fair amount of leeway as to what you can do in research and in your approach to your work.

I met up with the other people I had collaborated with over weekly Skype meetings since last winter.  It was interesting to meet them in person and I got some special hardware from the hardware guy we are working with for our current project.

In my opinion, about a third of the sessions were interesting, a third was okay, and another third wasn't of interest to me.  There was some cool stuff on measuring radio link connectivity burstiness, vehicle sensor networks, and integrating posture detection and geolocation data into social network sites.  There was stuff on distributed camera image recognition (detection people's gestures), ensuring privacy when sharing personal sensor data, and a environmental monitoring system using accelerometers to measure flow rate in water pipes.  I didn't care too much for the radio MAC protocol stuff and there were a few high-level programming frameworks that seemed uninteresting. 

According to my adviser, SenSys papers are focused on actual deployments and implementations while marginalizing theory in design.  Most of the papers had a giant deployment section with lots of pictures and evaluation statistics.  While deployments are practical, advancements are slow since so little new theory is developed.  One or two of the papers presented had simple data collection and evaluation schemes that were just tested extensively in the real world, such as a road pothole detection system using accelerometers and GPS/cell towers for localization.  I would like to work on stuff that can actually be deployed (I am now), but deployment and testing takes a lot of time and isn't really research.  Other conferences are more focused on theory and a simulation-based evaluation is acceptable.  The reviewers look more at algorithm design and novel theoretical ideas over real-world deployments and testing.  Additionally, the committees for each conference tend to have varying amounts of control over who gets accepted -- some are very tightly knit and seem to accept papers only from certain schools while others are more diverse and objective over their selections.

Listening to the paper presentations and going to the poster and demo sessions got me a few new ideas.  The poster and demo sessions were especially interesting because you could talk one-on-one with each person about what they had done or were working on.  A lot of people out there have a lot of good ideas.  Most of the presentations were done by students and a lot of them weren't much different than me in terms of age and experience.  It seems that students are typically listed as first authors and give the paper presentations while their advisers come to watch and ask all the hard questions.  That was also what was weird about it -- it wasn't much different than going to class and listening to student presentations, except that the work was exceptional.  I took a lot of notes and saw what made a good presentation: abstracting away details and making your main ideas clear.  It sounds like going to a conference (maybe not this one) and giving a talk on my paper is in my future.  I only have to get accepted first.

So now I come back motivated to get going on my current project.  The ideas are (hopefully) new and will actually work when we get the thing implemented.  I'll be able to do an actual test with sensors instead of just simulation.  The deadlines are looming and it's time to get moving.

It used to be that I would sacrifice hours of sleep in high school to play computer games every night.  Many nights I would stay up past 11 playing Counter-Strike or the latest Command and Conquer.  I could stay on the computer forever and then be a zombie in class the next day, nodding off as early as 9 or 10 in the morning.  During the summers, it would be the same thing: suffer through a run in the late morning heat and then play games the rest of the day.  I don't think my mom cared for that, doing nothing most of the day, and was probably relieved when I started working after my junior year.

Those days are over and I don't think they are coming back.  Something happened when I started college that has really changed my interests in nearly everything.  I'm not sure what it was or exactly how it happened, but it seems to have been a slow, gradual process that probably completed its transformation by the time I finished undergrad.  I'm different now and I wish I knew why.

I want to play video games, but I just can't get into it.  I've started playing stuff occasionally, such as the latest episodes of Half-Life 2 and Portal.  Those I finished because of their brevity, but longer stuff, like Call of Duty 4 and some recent RTS games I just started on, got stuck in one place and then just said: "screw it".  None of them are nearly as exciting as they would have been eight or ten years ago.  The most recent stuff that's out there now would have been mind-blowing to me back then: the latest GTA, Fallout 3, and possibly Spore.  I would have spent most of my life playing them, but not anymore.

It appears as though I'm not the only one that this has happened to.  Some of the research says it's to do with social networking; that everyone would rather play games with people they know rather than against unknown opponents online or a computer in single player.  I do notice a correlation between the time I spend on sites like Digg and Facebook and the decrease in time I spent playing games.  However, I still notice tons of people about my age and older that still play a fair amount: the assistants at PT talk occasionally about meeting up after work to play Halo, the physical therapist (in his 40s) even says he plays Madden on the weekends, my roomate plays plenty of PC games, and even my dad finished Crysis when I just dropped it after the zero-grav part.

In some ways, programming replaced the satisfaction I got from playing video games.  It's better because I have complete control over the environment.  In video games, you are forced to live in the environment the developers create and play by their rules.  It's like the first Matrix movie: why play by the rules when you can bend them or even create your own?  Why should I be restricted to use a shotgun to solve the problem of a developer-imagined monster when I can solve much more interesting problems of my own creation with tools of my own creation?  Yesterday, I spent all day thinking about a job-scheduling type scenario for wireless sensor networks.  Last night, I finally figured out a solution.  While the problem wasn't entirely my doing, coming up with the solution was much more in-depth and satisfying than blasting the crap out of a few enemy soldiers with a C-130 in CoD 4.  And, my solution may not be the best.  My adviser or the other guys in our group may come back with some constructive criticism to help with a better answer.

Again, I would really like to get back into gaming.  Doing work can be satsifying, but it is also draining and it would be great to have some kind of release since I can't run.  Some of the stuff that's out there right now sounds like it could be fun, but I don't even know if my PC can handle it.  Possibly, I'd have to upgrade the video card at the least, and of course that's a slippery slope to just upgrade the whole desktop that's been rusting under my desk.  It's too loud when it's on and generates a ton of heat, so there's a massive incentive to figure out how to make the whole thing quieter.  Furthermore, I've only got one monitor that I use with my laptop, so I'd have to unplug it, the keyboard, and the headphones and put them all into the PC whenever I want to play anything.  There's also the cost issue: right now I've got to save since my surgery/rehab is expensive.

Maybe I'll try once again to get back into gaming, and maybe I won't.  Maybe there will be another sea change that will shift my attitude and fun factor when I play, but I'm not so sure.

Yesterday marked over two months since the surgery.  I've come a long way, but there's a long way to go too.  I'm now allowed to bike and elliptical on my own, so I took advantage of that today and went to the school rec center: 15 minutes on the bike, and ten on the elliptical.  This I did in addition to my usual morning weight routine which takes nearly 45 minutes.  It would be great to bike outside, especially since the weather is nice today, but I don't think I'm ready for that and won't be for awhile.  My leg still shakes with weakness after 15 minutes.  Also, it seems that my good knee has been hurting and popping some, which must be some kind of compensation problem.  I'm hoping it's nothing serious and just a mild consequence of putting most of my weight on the good knee, since the pain started when I was on the crutches.

Last night one of my old teammates who goes to dental school in Richmond came down to see the team massage therapist.  I dropped by while he was there since I hadn't seen him since the summer.  The massage guy, who punished and tortured me for so many years, had an interesting comment about leg strength that I hadn't heard before: your quads should be 20 percent stronger than your hamstrings.  That is, if you are on a leg press that works your quads, you should use 100 pounds if you are using 80 pounds on a leg curl machine for your hamstrings.  No wonder runners have so much trouble with knees: quads get very little action compared to hamstrings and calves.  Biking can change that, though.

My teammate's got knee issues like I do and has been out ever since dominating the Boston marathon last spring.  He really hasn't been able to run since then and an MRI indicated grade 1 or 2 damage to the articular cartilage.  That's where the cartilage is bruised or has a small divot in it, but not like my grade 4 where it's chipped out all the way to the bone.  He seems so motivated to run again and get back into regular training, but with permanent damage like that, it may not be possible.  Since his damage wasn't as severe as mine, the docs say surgery wouldn't accomplish anything, which leaves him out in the cold if the pain persists.  Hopefully most of the pain is caused by some inflammation from whatever he did and once that subsides he'll be able to run again, but if I were him I would change my mindset.  Right now, I would consider my recovery a success if I am able to run 20 -30 miles a week.  It's so bad because he was running so well and even got some sponsorship offers.  Maybe it's not as bad and he'll be out there kicking butt again soon.

It begs an interesting philosophical question: would you like to run the race of your life knowing that you would never be able to run again?  You would sacrifice everything to blow the field out of the water.  Your time and place would be so much better than you ever hoped it would be, but when you finished, you would never be able to start again.  Would that be worth it instead of having a lifetime career of running but only making modest personal gains?  I don't know for sure, but I do like running just to be outside and to feel like I accomplished something.

I'm finally making some headway on the latest school project.  It should be an interesting experiment since we will get to wear some sensors for awhile to test our model.  Since we are going to use human test subjects, my advisor blindly checked off some box about it when sending in the research proposal to the school.  Now they are making us fill out all this liability stuff and explain our exact test procedure when we aren't really finalized on everything.  And, we, the researchers working on the project, are the only ones who are going to be the subjects, so I think we are completely aware of any "dangers" that go along with wearing some sensors.

Lastly, I got home to vote absentee at the city municipal center when I was on fall break.  I got that taken care of since I'll be at SenSys on election day.  Really, I don't think either presidential candidate matches my choices.  Obama's tax plan raises marginal tax rates for those who make under $45k per year (poor grad student). McCain plans to freeze all research spending for a year after he enters office.  Obama hasn't even finished a full term in the Senate; McCain is going to be 80 if he gets elected for two terms.

Both have the wrong idea on the economy.  The problem goes beyond government regulation or lack of it.  It starts with individuals.  A lot of people today are lazy and want everything for nothing. They want the car and house they can't afford, so they go into credit card debt and default on their mortgage.  They want the college that puts them $40k in the hole only to graduate and bus tables.  They want health care and retirement benefits without lifting a finger.  These people purchase what they can't afford and then expect everyone else to pay for it when the repo man comes knocking.  It's a sense of entitlement and it drives me mad.  Here's a hint to fix this mess: stop buying stuff that you can't afford or shouldn't be, get off your ass, and start contributing to society.  The same mindset of the CEOs with enormous golden parachutes and corrupt politicians taking enormous sums from lobbyists is present in everyone.  If this persists, we'll be in a barter economy real soon.  The problem is that the candidates and government can't blame the constituents without taking heat for it and risking their own jobs and re-election.  The solution starts from the bottom up, with you and me, not from the top down (government).

In the movies, every researcher, scientist, and professor has some kind of cryptic notebook that contains all their life's work and secrets.  Usually this entails some younger relative trying to decipher/recover the notebook after the professor dies/goes missing.  Lots of advice websites for research-oriented grad students suggest to keep a log of everything you do.  Maybe I should, too.

My current system is basically using printer paper to write down or sketch out stuff I'm working on, which I then carry around in a folder.  I usually carry the paper around until the stuff on it makes its way into latex or code or the stuff on the paper isn't worthy of any more effort.  Then I throw it away.  It usually takes from a few days to a week or two for me to get a new sheet, fill it up, and do something with what I put on it.  Sometimes I have several sheets going at once, which all go in the folder.  There isn't really any order to it either, just a bunch of bullet points on some idea or a sketch of something.

This isn't really working out and I need a better way to organize everything, or at least keep it around in case I want to go back and look at it. A white board would be great, but you can't carry it with you and there is also the issue of erasing stuff when you run out of space.  So white boards are out.  Plenty of computerized note taking/sketch programs are available, but writing stuff out can be faster and I like to make drawings and diagrams of stuff.  I don't have a wacom tablet or tablet PC to make sketches with, so that's out too.

So, research notebooks sound like the answer.  Except that I'm picky.  I want a notebook with:

• Hardcover, so I can bear down on it without the need of a desk
• Spiral binding, so I can flip one side of it underneath the other to save space
• Grid rules, so I can lay out writing and sketches neatly
• Heavyweight paper, since I'm a heavy-handed writer and my writing pushes through thin paper
• 75-100 pages, so I don't have to get a new one every month

It seems difficult to find such a notebook, even if it exists.  I've been looking at BookFactory, which seems to have a lot of options, but I haven't really found one yet that meets my specs.  The closest I found was a sketchbook at the school bookstore that had everything but the grid rules, but the paper was also really coarse and not really good for handwriting.

Maybe I'll find something.  For now, I got a regular spiral notebook with grid rules and will see how that goes.  At least I'll try to keep everything I write down.

Yeah, that's progress.

This week at the physical therapist was good from a flexibility standpoint.  I can now sit on the edge of a table and let my leg hang down without any tightness.  I couldn't do that at the start of this week.  Because I can now bend my knee to 90 degrees -- and move the brace that much, I can now get my left shoe on without using a giant shoehorn.

I've progressed to using one crutch for a lot of my getting around, but when I go longer distances, I still stick to two.  My knee feels a lot more stable than it did and it seems to tolerate the weight bearing more without getting sore.  Slowly, I will try to walk farther with only one crutch and I am already going short distances without anything at all, but I feel kind of like I'm on stilts.

Yesterday, the weather started taking a crap and it's been terrible outside.  While I was headed to and from the office in the miserable mess, at least five people asked me if I needed a ride or help getting around.  I did have to go farther than normal to get to my parking space since it seemed everyone drove.  Nobody ever said anything to me before.  Maybe that says something good about human nature when stuff gets tough. 

I need to go to the grocery store but I don't feel confident enough to go by myself since I can't really carry much with only one crutch.  When I do, it throws off my balance.  The Trader Joe's is open that rose out of one of the new vast swaths of clearcut woods.  I thought about going in there after my appointment today, but it was a complete mob scene, since today was the first day it was open.  I figured it would be bad when everyone at the physical therapist was talking about it.  People were almost parking along the highway to get in there.  I'll go back after some of the hype dies down and when I'll be able to get around better on my own.

They finally gave me my diploma today and for the longest time I thought I hadn't done something that I was supposed to in order to graduate.  I was supposed to get it in August.  Finally, this morning I got an email and I went over to the registrar and picked it up.  No real ceremony this time.  It looks just like my other one except that the president has changed and it reads "Scientae Magistrum".  They didn't give me a cover for it either, so I've got to get something to protect it.

Next week I'll get to ride the bike.  Of course, the therapist's idea of riding the bike is probably a lot different than mine at this point.  It will still be good to start back, though, even if it's just ten minutes of slowly turning my legs around.

This appeared in my inbox yesterday with the heading "MicroSoft Corporation":

HEY GENIUS, WE WANT YOU!

Microsoft:
Meet the Company!
9/18
4:30-5:30pm
Andrews Hall room 101

People here love their work because they get to think big and dream big.
Right now we're looking for the next generation of Microsoft innovators.
If you have talent and a passion for technology, this could be your big moment.
Come find out more about our fulltime and internship opportunities and the area of Seattle!

Bring your résumé for a chance
to win great prizes!

FREE FOOD will be provided!

OMG Free Food? It's as if the author thinks that the food will change my decision whether or not to go. The sentence structure seems very pedantic and more like that of something a non-native English speaker (Nigerian scammer) would write. It just doesn't seem to flow very well -- usually in these emails it's more along the lines of "Company X is currently seeking a customer service oriented and highly creative individual to provide services and support as a Junior Software Test/Documentation Specialist."

The department later sent out a more formal email verifying that this was indeed real, which I found hard to believe. Regardless, I'm not looking for a job at the moment. I will say that the latest round of recruitment emails from our department and the school's career services has been much better than the typical "Redneck Technical Services is looking for an entry level web designer in Rustic, VA with a starting salary of $20K."

I noticed today when I had the brace off that my left calf is down to almost nothing. It's going to be rough coming back. I'm not getting as much popping in the left knee as I was a few weeks ago, which makes me think that something has started to fill in the hole of missing cartilage.

Everyone else seems to be out doing stuff with their perfectly fine knees. My mom ran in the half marathon at the beach last weekend, my sister runs regularly and is playing in a rugby game next weekend. A few of the guys who were close to my year have continued to run and do some races -- one guy I know posted pictures from a nasty 18 mile mountain pass run in Colorado. My roommate back at school has started to run again after a year off and is out exploring the area every day. I did hear that one of my old teammates who ran a solid marathon in the spring is still out with patella tendon issues, so I'm not alone.

I was up at school one day last week to see my adviser and I also stopped to talk with my old coach. It was great to talk to everyone, but I still wasn't comfortable with being back at school. When I came back home, I was exhausted. Once I can walk again, things will be so much easier. At school, I had to plan how to get around without running into staircases or steep hills. All the doors to the buildings weigh ten tons and are almost impossible to open when on crutches. They also have those worthless anti-slam things on them that cause the door to close on you as soon as you try to go through it. Having the disabled parking placard helps a lot because otherwise, I'd be crutching for several miles to get to the office and to the hall when I went to see my coach. That said, here at home I still make an effort to get out each day and go around the block, which takes 15 - 20 minutes. It's getting easier, but it still isn't fun.

I'm starting on a new school project so work consists of looking for state-of-the-art papers. I don't particularly enjoy reading research papers, but otherwise I'll neither have many ideas for research nor will I know if the work or problems I am interested in has already been solved. I'm now officially a Ph.D. candidate so I won't have to worry about taking any more classes. From here on out, it's going to be research, which is exciting. Of course, success has a new meaning: it's no longer the grades you get, but whether or not your work gets published. This is going to be hard. Of course, it's still possible that I can graduate without publishing anything, but an employer would really think twice before hiring me if my research wasn't that great. I could also start a business of my own, but that would probably mean that my work was sufficiently good (and published) that it would be worth selling.

There were a few unresolved issues with the paper we just submitted for review, but no matter how it turns out, it will be a good learning experience. The past six months or so have been a complete paradigm shift and there were so many new things that I picked up on that it will be a valuable lesson for what to do in the future.

Overall, a lot of things have happened that are different from "normal". Not all of them are good (like the whole knee deal), but I can learn from everything.

I've had trouble with the area around my left knee for a few years, but for the most part it had been tolerable. But then, back in late January I was out running one freezing cold morning and my knee just blew up. I heard something snap as a shockwave of pain went through my knee. Since then, my running has been a mess. For a few weeks afterwards I was able to run okay, but with a lot of popping and cracking and irritation. Then I started compensating on the other leg and was out until the late spring because of my right IT band. Despite not running much for several months, the irritation in the left knee never went away. I felt it driving, climbing stairs, and sometimes walking around. I knew something bad had happened and it was only a matter of time before I had to do something about it. Since the IT band got better, I've been running more. That is, until two weeks ago when I began to feel really bad grinding pain in the joint. It was time to face the pain and deal with it.

After two visits to the orthopedist and an MRI, the doctor says I have torn a hole in my articular cartilage that surrounds the joint. The piece that tore out is now floating around above the knee joint, which explains the weird spasms and soreness I have at the end of the lower quad. The good thing (according to the doctor) is that the hole is kind of on the side of the joint, meaning that it doesn't bear much weight. If the hole were on the bottom, I wouldn't be able to walk. The doctor had me do a couple different movements with my leg and was surprised that they didn't cause me much pain. It seemed that the MRI indicated that I was much worse off than I felt. Going in there after the MRI, I was surprised to get such a definitive answer as to what was going on. It seems that most of my past injuries were always ambiguous, but of course they were never this bad.

So now I am scheduled for surgery at the end of August to remove the loose piece of cartilage and to stimulate growth of new cartilage via a process known as "microfracture". They poke holes in the bone where the hole is and cause bleeding and a clot to form. Over time, the area is supposed to form new cartilage. It won't be as good as the original cartilage, but it will be better than nothing and hopefully stop the metal-on-metal grinding that I've had when I last ran.

So now I have to face the prospect of not being able to run again for a very long time. Post-surgery I am supposed to be on crutches for a minimum of four weeks, but I have heard it can take longer before you can walk again. The healing process takes months so it may be that long before I can try running, but the doctor seems to think that I will be able to run again with no problem. This is good, but it really sucks that I won't be able to do much for a long while. A couple other guys on the team have had similar problems and have had long, frustrating recoveries. I have to remember that the damage has already been done and that I will have to get the surgery or else the piece floating around in the knee could cause further complications.

Things will get worse before they get better, but it sounds like many people are able to pick up where they left off running-wise after having the same surgery. If I don't get this done and deal with it, then I'll never have a chance of getting back to where I was.

I find this funny, because a year ago I remarked to Keith when we were in Sacramento that I had probably done some permanent damage to myself after running in college for five years. At that point an area below the knee had been bothering me for over a year and was getting increasingly sore. The soreness below the knee seemed to come and go with time, sometimes going away for months at a time. Over last summer and into the fall it seemed to go away almost completely, but then it came back in the winter and seemed to be the basis for the blowup in January. The doctor wondered what I had done to cause such a problem but neither he nor I could seem to come up with an explanation as to why things progressed from the soreness to the sudden explosion.

For the past few weeks I've been biking, but sometimes I can feel something in the knee when I just start out or really jam on the pedals. It hasn't been too bad and it's just as well because it's been so hot. Biking in Williamsburg is pretty enjoyable since it's only about 10 minutes to rural farm roads. I did go home this past weekend and fought the tourists biking on Atlantic Ave.

All the stuff for my M.S. degree has been turned in and I should get my diploma at the end of August. I don't think there is a ceremony or anything but I think I'm allowed to go to the spring graduation in 2009. My sister and I can "graduate" at the same time. I'll still be here another two, three or more years, though. I'm glad I decided to do the Ph.D., considering the alternative of working in a cube farm as usual and doing something boring and mundane that some boss wants me to do. The work here has been challenging and has kept my interest. The work from my M.S. project is being refined into a conference paper that we will try to get out within a month. I've read some strong arguments as to why to not get a Ph.D., but at this point I figure I have nothing to lose as long as I am fully funded and am making progress towards completion. Most of the arguments are about the increasing difficulty of getting a tenured faculty position, but most likely I will go into industry. Those at the places I've worked that had Ph.D.s had a lot of control over what they worked on and also seemed indispensable to their organization. They had a lot more creative license than the regular code monkeys. I just can't see myself being a regular run of the mill programmer for the rest of my life, always doing what someone else tells me to. Anyhow, if it hits the fan while I'm here, I can get out with my M.S. and still get a regular job.

A lot has been on my mind the past few months, but recently it's been dominated by this mess with my knee. The coming months are going to be a bigger test of willpower and attitude than during any period during my high school or college running career.

I got some mail today from the Dean addressing me as "Professor" in regards to my TA position. How weird is that?

I finally feel like I've gotten past the latest surge in work and don't feel as bogged down as I did a week or two ago. My work is more clearly defined.

I can get going on some implementation of the system I am working on with my advisor (finally) so that we can move on to putting out a paper. If I don't finish this, then I won't ever get my M.S. The Theory of Computation class has some difficult NP-Complete reduction problems so while that will be difficult to get through, I don't have to finish it right away. Looking at those problems a little bit every day is much better than staring at them for hours and getting nowhere.

Since I do have some free time, I got Call of Duty 4 through Steam. Though a lot of people complain about it, I really like the concept of Steam. There isn't any rummaging through various B+M stores looking to see if they have what you want. There isn't any annoying packaging and CD to insert everytime you want to play. There isn't any CD to lose, either -- you just redownload.

I've played through a portion of the game already in the past day since I downloaded it and so far, it's been great. It's very cinematic and the battles seem so out of control. A lot of the time I feel so helpless with stuff blowing up all over the place and bullets screaming by. At the same time, though, the game depends on you to get stuff done. The other soldiers you're with won't advance until you do, so you do have to make some kind of progress. If you don't, they'll just hang back and the enemies will continuously respawn in the same places. The linear aspect of the game is the only drawback (along with a pretty weak AI), but the action definitely makes it fun. I haven't played the multiplayer yet, but I heard it's great, which is one of the reasons I bought the game. With many games, the multiplayer is pretty bland, so I'll finish the singleplayer and then leave the game to collect dust -- four hours of gameplay isn't really worth $50. But, a good multiplayer that allows hours of fun in addition to good singleplayer allows me to recoup my investment.

I also saw Into the Wild, which prompted me to buy the book. The movie reminded me of a few guys on the team that had a similar attitude as the main character. It would be great just to cut loose and forget about all the nuances of every day life, except this guy really did it. Christopher McCandless graduated college and decided to hitchhike, hop trains, kayak to Mexico, and live in a bus in the Alaskan wilderness. Unfortunately, he took it a little too far and starved to death. It seemed that he didn't have much knowhow in terms of wilderness survival, or that maybe he wanted it to go that way. The movie (and maybe the book) got me thinking about what it would be like if I just up and left without telling anyone. To disappear into the great beyond with no real destination in mind. Forget sleeping in the same bed every day, going through the same old routine, going to class, eating the same bland food, and seeing the same things. Every day would bring something new and exciting. Of course, it wouldn't be any walk in the park -- things that I normally take for granted would suddenly become a huge problem, mainly food, shelter, and just general health kind of stuff.

The Colonial Relays were this weekend and I caught a little bit of the meet. A few of the guys who recently graduated came back and it was nice to see them. Most, like myself, are still in school, just somewhere else. It's funny how removed I feel from practicing and competing despite still running every day from the locker room and seeing everybody that's still here. At this point it's difficult to imagine racing. Just running is an accomplishment at this point.

The semester is coming to a quick end -- only 3 weeks and two labs left to TA. Hopefully I'll finish everything successfully.

This semester is busy and filled with all kinds of stuff for me to do, but it's coming to an end quickly. Looking at the calendar, there are only five more weeks of classes. I've got a wireless paper presentation, a handful of assignments for Theory of Computation, and a wireless project paper and presentation along with the usual readings. That's just the stuff for my two classes.

Then, I've got extra stuff for my adviser for the M.S. project/research which is really an extension of my wireless class project. There are weekly things he wants me to do which can make things tough. Since he keeps changing his mind on the details of the project, I have to continually refine the paper I'm working on to reflect these changes. I really want to just pick something and go with it so I can do some actual implementation, get some experimental or simulated results, and put the stuff in a paper. Then I can get my M.S. degree. The deadline for my M.S. paper and project is basically next week and my adviser didn't want to push it, so I (hopefully) will get my degree in the summer.

The end of the semester won't be the end, but I'm hoping that I'll be done with my M.S. stuff by then. I then have to apply for candidacy into the PhD program (actually I don't even have to be done with my M.S. project for that), but I have to be done with the classes I am taking this semester. Hopefully I can choose a committee without any problems and they will look at my classes and grades and say: OK. Hopefully. This all seems like a dream and it's hard to believe that this is where I am in my life.

There are only four labs left for my intro Java class, so there won't be too much left for that. Some of the labs are getting more complicated and some of the students are having trouble with some of the concepts (arrays, interfaces). I do my best to help, but I can tell that some of the students don't like me. This is mainly because I get as frustrated as they do when I can't explain something to them very well. As I've said before, learning to program is an individual task -- spoon feeding the answers to problems doesn't help you learn. Teaching the concepts helps, but you really have to work on stuff on your own to truly understand everything. I have to try to get the students to think independently. I try to make them ask the right questions about what went wrong when they have problems.

The housing selection stuff for the gradplex is this week so my roommate and I have to pick out a place. We have to find another building since we are going to be here in the summer. The one we are in now is going to be renovated. Unfortunately, the building also has the laundry machines for the whole complex. I have a feeling they will just close off the whole place and I'll have to go somewhere else to do laundry. The computer science building is really close to one of the undergrad dorms which has laundry machines. I could drag my stuff over there and do it while I'm working in the office.

The other day I was thinking about taking home a lot of my winter clothes since I wouldn't need them anymore. Then I realized: What's the point if I'm going to be in Williamsburg year-round? I can just keep everything there and not have to take it home. That seems weird. It's like I'm gradually starting to move out of home. At the same time, though, I've gone home a lot more than I used to.

I have gone home a ton and I'm at home again now. It's nice to get good food and to sleep like a rock when I'm here. My dad is here for the first time in what seems like forever since he is always working. It seems a lot more peaceful at home than at school when there's always someone that's crashing around in the building or yelling outside. Despite that, the undergrad dorms, and especially my freshman dorm, were like pure mayhem compared to the gradplex. I'll probably wind up at home again next weekend since it's Sarah's birthday. Also, she probably won't be able to come up to Williamsburg because of her job. Funny that this time around, she just ordered what she wanted online (a coat) and I'll just pay her back for it. It doesn't seem like much of a present since I don't wrap it or even get to give it to her, but it's probably for the best since it's something that she wants and will enjoy. At least I got a card.

The going isn't necessarily ideal, but I am making some kind of progress.

I always make my own schedule for school to try to get things done by a certain date or time so that I can stay ahead. It almost never happens, especially over longer breaks like this one. As with most spring breaks, most of the week will go by without doing any work at all, and then I'll do some right at the end. I'll never do as much as I had hoped, meaning that everything I have to do gets crammed into the next week or so. This week I've got to finish some work on a paper, read two papers and write some comments for them, grade and prepare for the next lab, and get going on another Theory of Computation assignment. It doesn't seem like a lot, but I've got more irritating meetings and extra classes to deal with again.

Overall it was nice being home for an extended period of time, though my only wish was that I wasn't injured. I did get to see Sarah quite a few times since she has an elliptical machine and I could use that one instead of going up to the local gym. She came over and ate dinner at my house one night, which was nice. We watched quite a few movies when I was on the machine, but finished only one or two since I only went for an hour at most.

It seems there is less and less a distinction between going home and school since there is always stuff I've got to do. I might go home again next weekend since my former roommates and teammates Dan and Jason are coming to run the Shamrock half marathon. I wanted to do the full marathon, but thanks to all this crap going on with my IT band, I can't.

It's nice with the time change that it stays lighter later. The sun angle is getting higher so it doesn't look like the sun is perpetually setting. It does seem to be getting warmer too. A few days ago it was 75, but with seemingly hurricane force winds. A neighbor's giant oak tree snapped in half and came crashing down into the lake. What a mess that made.

Invariably, after any period off from school longer than a weekend, torrents of the same inquisition echo across campus:

How was your break?
Was it a good break?
Where did you go on your break?
What did you do on your break?

Everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off screaming these same irritating questions at each other. "Blah blah blah break blah blah blah." I would venture to say that 95% of the students do the same thing as I do: go home and do nothing. I ran into a bunch of teammates on Friday before I left as most were heading to practice for a workout. They all seemed jealous that I got to go home while they all had to stay at school for most of the week to practice and get ready for IC4As. I consider them to be the lucky ones. They get to blaze around the track in tough workouts and head to Boston for one of the meets I've enjoyed the most. Plenty of times this semester I've walked by the track on the way to the UC for dinner and seen everyone working out. It leaves me feeling sad that I'm not a part of that anymore. I would feel a lot better if I could run again normally and I could join them again at least one or two days a week.

Sarah has an elliptical machine at her house so I went over there yesterday and did that while she did some homework. It was better than the rec center since we put on Animal House and I had to strain to see the only clock in the room. The machine was a lot different than the ones at school -- the school ellipticals are more like those nordic trac skiing machines and don't make you cycle your knee through much of a range of motion. This one was more aggressive and its resistance was also greater, which probably put more pressure on my IT band. It didn't hurt, but it seemed a little tight afterwards. I'll try some running today to see how it goes (a couple loops around the block) and maybe head over there for some more elliptical. I don't enjoy it that much, as I've said, but it's better than sitting around and being a bum.

I do have some work to do over the next week. First, I've got to typeset and turn in the Theory of Computation homework that my professor has been so lenient about. I've done the actual work on paper, but now I've got to typeset it, and I feel really lazy and don't want to do anything school related. I've also got to start on the design overview for the sensor network project I'm working on. As it turns out, my Theory of Computation professor said most Master's students who do a project just write a paper based on a proposed system but don't actually implement anything. If I can convince my adviser to finalize our design as quickly as possible (we've been screwing around a bit and changing things), then I might actually be able to get the paper done by the end of March. If I do that, then I'll make the deadline for the Master's project and get my degree in May. That would be nice, but I'm not betting the farm on it. This week I should also modify my TA lab grading script to handle infinite loops when running students' code.

My dad has a trip to San Francisco this week, so that would be cool to go out there and come back, but I doubt there will be empty seats on the plane. Since I'm hurt, worrying about having to run hasn't been bothering me as much, so I can be more flexible about stuff like that. Unfortunately, I'll probably just be stuck here.

Screwing around on the Internet as I do nearly every day, I came across something interesting: a maple-flavored pie that someone had found at some restaurant in Vermont. The pictures and testimonial made it sound really good, so I scoured the Internet for recipes. I found one that appeared on several sites, which took maple sugar. Since you can't really get that in a store around here, I ordered some from Vermont and made the recipe with the help of my mom (with the crust). It wasn't all that great and didn't look like anything in the pictures. It came out more like a maple flavored quiche -- very eggy. Later, I found the recipe that was probably the one in the pictures and variations of it. Basically, just condensed milk or cream, maple syrup, and some versions have flour, but no eggs. I could try making that one.

Being able to eat decent food and sleep in my own bed are two great things about being at home this week. Since the first day of my freshman year, I've never slept well at school, but as soon as I'm home, I'm out like a rock every night. I don't know what gives. Also, the UC food has been really crappy and repetitive as of late, especially with regards to having some kind of vegan patty just about every night as the main attraction. Being able to eat good stuff again has improved my mood.

So, that pretty much sums it up for the next week or so. I guess now it's off to see how my IT band does today.