Attended the TA meeting in the early afternoon. Continued working on Microelectronic Circuits Lab homework. Engineering Economics was incredibly boring. Programmed interest rate routines into my calculator. Taught recitation today, and it went quite well, covering introductory MATLAB topics such as scripts, functions, and arrays.
Met with Chris to check over the VLSI homework before turning it in at the College of Computing, room 360. I think I’ve successfully knocked out problem 1 for Microelectronic Circuits Lab. Progress, at last! Started working on morse code for my next FCC Technician Plus licensing test using xcwcp, a Linux Morse code training program.
Wrestled with Microelectronic Circuits Lab homework for most of the afternoon with Chris, and finished the VLSI homework. Fixed a quoting bug in the school database software. Kevin offered me a no-frills job offer for CS1371, Computing for Engineers. It certainly would be nice to teach a new class for a change, but I’m still undecided as to whether I should accept the offer. I have marketable job skills, apparently.
Briefly read the articles for ECE4000, and finished the writing assignment soon after. Adam and I spent much of the evening configuring our new Debian Linux file server, freya. I set up Logical Volume Management (LVM) across the multiple IDE drives, as well as Samba, and my Quantum SCSI hard disk as my home directory. Also went to Home Depot to purchase cable ties and split flex tubing to clean up the cabling around my computer.
Georgia Tech Career Services has a list of average reported starting salaries by degree. Used gnupg.sl to get PGP keys to work with slrn. Got my compilers group worked out – I’ll be teaming up with Ben and Sanjay. Set up a CVS repository. Finished the ECE3042 Lab and worked with Chris on ECE3060 afterwards.
Went to visit the VLSI professor in the morning to talk about nMOS transistors, and got a head start on the VLSI homework, which I spent most of the afternoon working on. I also found a neat Karnaugh map minimization tool.
The first lab in Microelectronic Circuits Lab on BJTs. I didn’t finish within the three alloted hours, but the lab is a lot less stressful now that I have an entire week to do each experiment. Had a short chat with Maryam on coursework and such. Compilers was great. I think I’m going to get a lot out of that class, even if I’m not a senior Computer Science major. The night was spent hacking away at ML code with the help of Stevie and creating a simple Binary Search Tree with standard input I/O capabilities.
Robert inquired about a possible PennMUSH package. Went to Engineer’s Bookstore in the morning to purchase nearly fifty dollars worth of overpriced electronics for Microelectronic Circuit Lab. Started off the day with VLSI and Advanced Digital Design (ECE3060), followed by Electromagnetics (ECE3025), and finally, Project Engineering and Professional Practice (ECE4000). I found a nice LaTeX IEEE style template for ECE4000. Should be an interesting, though difficult, term. Adam, Nicky, and I had dinner at the Lonestar Steakhouse.
Rearranged my room. Installed the SCSI hard drive as device 8. Except for initially reading the jumper diagram upside down, everything went smoothly. Downloaded FreeBSD, and installed it on the new hard drive. Bought a plant from Home Depot. Concluded watching the Chobits anime series. School starts tomorrow. Life should quickly get busy again.