Stacie and I went to Willy’s Mexicana Grill for lunch. It’s much like Moe’s, with marginally better chips and better prices, the only significant downside being the less hip atmosphere. Later in the day, Stacie and I met up with an old friend, Ethan. You may remember him from such events as Spring Break 2003. Word, Ethan. So Stacie, Ethan, his roommate and I went out for dinner at Jade Palace, where we chatted about Harry Potter and other trivialities for a few hours over tasty chinese food. We should hang out more.

Although nothing exciting happened, I did complete most of the homework for Microelectronic Circuits. Doing work on a Friday - that’s something I would have never imagined a few weeks ago. With Adam not around (what a distraction!), my study habits have really started to improve. Of course, he’s going to read the previous sentence and be really mad at me. Deal. And Nicky needs to get his own bedroom.

Being the last day of Microelectronic Circuits for the week, I expected a pop quiz. It didn’t happen, and this frightens me. I’m sure we’ll have one on Monday. Instrumentation & Circuits Lab went unusually well today. I finished slightly ahead of time and managed to help some of the other people in the class. I updated the bills for this month, and they should go out soon. Unfortunately, the day was otherwise uneventful.

Stacie and I had a late lunch at Doc Chey’s Noodle House. We found the place after searching the labyrinth known as the city of Atlanta. It turns out that Moreland and Briarcliff are really the same street. Don’t forget that. The trip was well worth it, however. I had a delicious, filling bowl of chicken fried rice with my favorite coconut chicken soup.

Tracy turned me into an anonymous laboratory rat (S653) for a night at Duke University, in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She measured my brain waves (ERP) in an auditory cueing experiment. I myself was more interested in the computational and software aspects of the experiment, rather than the actual cognitive data obtained.

Primarily, two software packages were used to collect the data: Presentation 0.51 Build 09.12.02, and Scan 4.1. The resulting data was huge - approximately 250 MB of data were uploaded to the weizen.ccn server. For legal reasons, no screen captures of the data acquisition programs were collected. Actually, I just made that up. I really don’t know why I can’t take screen captures of the tools.

Presentation is an auditory, visual and multi-modal stimulus delivery software tool for Neuroscience. It makes the pretty noises that the subject responds to. The software uses a Pascal-like Presentation Control Language (PCL) to program and execute presentation scenarios interpretively. Scan 4.1 simultaneously collects and graphs the resulting scenario data.

Tracy and I had dinner for two at the Kanki Japanese House of Steaks restaurant here in Durham. It was a really neat and unique experience because they make your food right in front of you at the table. It turns out that there’s a similar restaurant around here in Marietta too, so I’ll definitely have to check that out. I helped Tracy pack some of her things, and learned how to fold a map. For dinner tomorrow, I think we’ll go out to eat at the Outback Steakhouse. I know this to be true, because I’ve come from the future to finish this entry.

Met with Peter Wan and Neil Bright around three at the second floor of the College of Computing. After a brief meeting consisting of identification verification, paperwork, and notarization, Peter and Neil verified my X.509 certificate through the Thawte Web of Trust. As a result of this process, my X.509 certificates can now include my name. Left for North Carolina in the afternoon to see Tracy, and arrived safely sometime during the night.

Another strenuous Instrumentation & Circuits Lab, occupying a full three hours of my time. Learned about Objective Caml, a functional programming language based on a dialect of ML.

Had a pop quiz in Microelectronic Circuits. Made an appointment with Neil Bright and Peter Wan for Friday evening to sign my X.509 certificate.

Instrumentation & Circuits Lab took a very long time. Four hours long. I think the lab would have been a lot simpler except that our Teaching Assistant didn’t show. It was a relatively basic experiment, mostly involving the measurement of resistance using both digital (HP34401A) and analog (Simpson Meter Model 260-7) multimeters. They usually limit labs to three hours, even though the labs take longer, mainly because they don’t want you to learn anything. Their plan worked - I didn’t learn a thing, but I have lots and lots of data! Later in the evening, I finished the first homework for Instrumentation & Circuits.