I'm excited to be flying to Irvine. I think this summer will be fun. If nothing else I don't have homework. Constant hw, reading, projects is starting to be weary. Hopefully the plan this summer will be to work on my project only during working hours. Anything after is my time. No homework, no outside reading, no running to lab at 10 pm. Anyway, have to finish prep work for my stay. I live in the Bay Area, CA, which is approximately six hours by car from the LA region. My flight is an hour and a half to the John Wayne airport in Irvine, CA.

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Got to the airport, rented a car for the day and drove to campus. Irvine is nothing like Berkeley. Went grocery shopping to stock up and throughout the drive I thought of how I was going to get around the big campus. Especially since I don't have a sense of where everything is yet. Spent the day unpacking, rearranging, and reading.

My roommate didn't show up and after living the last two years by myself, I've gotten used to having my own space, so it's a good thing for now. I live in a two bedroom apartment with two other undergraduates. It's supposed to be two people per room. We have a small kitchen, a small living area and a balcony.

My first official day of working I got to meeting Eli (Professor Elaheh Bozorgzadeh), Laura Beck (the other DMPer), and Love Singh (one of Eli's new grad students). Eli gave us a tour of the labs. The afternoon was spent finding desks with computers for each of us. We went to lunch at Panera Bread. It's also been decided that we would have individual daily meetings with Eli for half hour to discuss our work. Love's is at 3 PM, mine at 3:30 PM and Laura's at 4 PM.

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Kevin (significant other/best bud/all around helpful person) visited for the 4th of July weekend. I took the bus to the airport, there we rented a car and spent the day getting stuff for the apt and most importantly I got a bike. Solves the transportation issue. Went to see Spider Man 2 on Friday evening and on Sunday we went to Disneyland. Spent the morning in California Adventures, the rides were okay, and the afternoon in Disneyland. People were lining up for the fireworks at the castle four hours in advance and the place got really, really crowded. What was worse was that we were sitting right in front of the castle and the fireworks were behind the castle, so we only got to see the ones that went way up high. Main St. was pretty cool, we got a 3 dimensional picture of us in crystal at one of the stores. I think I'd like to go back again, it's really nice at night. I love the little places they have set up, the best is New Orleans square. It's romantic ambiance is amazing at dusk.

My bike was cool in that it had a detachable front wheel. Except once I took it out, the faulty front break fell apart. So I asked Eli to drive me to the nearest Target and I exchanged the bike for a different model. Good thing, because the original was a little small and I got one that was next up in size.

Laura also got a bike at Target, the same kind I originally had, and her rear wheel break became a bit loose. Apparently Target is not exactly the place you want to get your bikes at. But it suited our purposes, I wasn't going to spend more than I had to for a bike for two and a half months.

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Tried to find a piano that I could use on a regular basis. I visited the music department page, called them up, and went down to their building. Nada. After several days I felt frustrated, this is a big university, they should have at least one piano available for anyone campus related to use. And at this point I still didn't have internet access because I didn't have a UCInet ID (their equivalent to CALNet ID's) so I decided to visit the community center out of sheer boredom. They at least had a computer lab I could use. Imagine my surprise when I found out they also had a piano in their lounge. Grr. All that work for nothing, I should've just gone there in the first place.

I also need to eat, preferably three times a day. With my new nifty bike, I can bike to Albertsons, which is located on the way other side of campus. I bike there after work, got enough foodstuffs to fit in my backpack and bike back to my apt. Unfortunately that's not enough for the entire week, so I bike to Albertsons at least twice a week. The first time around to get dry stuff and the next for things that I couldn't fit in my bag the first time.

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Invited Laura to my apt for lunch since it was so close to the lab, so we biked back to my apt for lunch and watched TV. Too many judge shows. Laura mentioned that she has Buffy season 2, so we're going to watch that instead. We'll bike back to my apt for lunch and watch an episode of Buffy from now on.

Laura and I biked to Newport beach and we went swimming in the ocean. Even though I live next to the ocean (up north by San Francisco), it's usually too cold to go swimming. We body surfed for about two hours and decided to take the bus back. The bus unfortunately was the last one and it stopped at the transit center. We biked back towards campus. On one of the streets a car stopped too far into the pedestrian crossing zone, so I had to make a wide turn around it and a sharp turn onto the side walk. I braked too hard on my front wheel and I flew headfirst onto the sidewalk. Good thing I didn't land on my head, even though I had my helmet on. I was wearing long sleeves and jeans, but my knees, palms and elbows still stung. We decided to take a break and have dinner nearby, at this time it was getting  late anyway. We had dinner at Panera Bread (again, an excellent place) and biked back the rest of the way to campus.

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Lately I've been feeling bored. I don't know anyone here and it's hard to connect because most of the people I live with are undergraduates and are involved in their own affairs. The graduate students at lab talk with us, but they tend to be busy and hang out with other grad students. It's a good thing Laura's around, or else it would be a long summer (outside of research at least).

Decided to get a library card to get some reading done that I've been meaning to get around to (The booklist is at six pages right now). Had to get Melanie (the dept secretary) to write me a letter stating that I wasn't a thug and that I wouldn't sell the books on a street corner. Just kidding. She had to write that I was here working with a professor for the summer. I checked out four of Samuel Clemens books. The first two are short (The Diaries of Adam and Even and A Murder, A Mystery and A Marriage), the last two are longer (The Innocents Abroad and A Tramp Abroad). Clemens is a funny guy.

[To the Top]

Same old, same old. Laura comes by for dinner now a days, we've cut quite a swath thru the Buffy episodes.

Going thru The Innocents Abroad. I like reading about Twain's travel experiences and his funny comments about the people. His writing style is very descriptive. It feels like I'm walking along with him on the streets of France or observing the churches on every other block of Europe. It's funny to hear him describe every church the best, the most beautiful, the grandest, the epitome of man's creativity, and so on and so forth. Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and talk to him or at least observe him in his travels. 

On a different note, I was browsing the DMP sites and found out that there's another DMPer at Irvine. Her name is Aimee Strang and she's from the University of Maryland, Baltimore College. Laura and I are going to have lunch with her on Monday.

I was going to visit Kevin, but then it wouldn't look good if I asked to be excused on Friday, two weeks after I asked already. Even if I keep up with my work. So Kevin's going to fly down instead. He has a more flexible schedule than I do anyway.

Wednesday I went out to play dodge ball and twisted my knee. Excruciating pain. I couldn't move for a long time. My RA wouldn't drive me to the ER because of liability issues. I thought it was rather stupid, they'd rather me call an ambulance to take me to the hospital for a twisted knee. If I had a car I'd have just driven myself.

Anyway, Kevin was originally going to come down on Friday and stay the weekend. Instead he rescheduled the flight for early Thursday morning and drove up to campus. That afternoon we went to the ER at Irvine Medical (or Irvine General, one of those. There's a lot of hospitals in Irvine.). Were really surprised at the lack of wait time. Perhaps being in the richest county in the country does have it's benefits. Anyway, they took x-rays of my knee, then told me to go home, rest it and ice it. Just have to wait for the swelling to go down.

We got home. I'd already bought Jessica Simpson tickets for Friday evening and frankly I wanted to do something other than sit at home, so crutches and all, we went to the Universal Amphitheater. The UA is right next to Universal Studios and we had to walk a loooong way down Citywalk, at least that's how it felt to me. It didn't occur to me to ask for a wheel chair. By the end of the night, my wrists were in agony from bearing weight. To add insult to the injury, it was hard to hear Jessica Simpson thru the amped up speakers.

By the time we drove back, it was midnight and we decided get the grocery shopping out of the way. Brought nearly a month's worth of groceries and headed back to the apt. I hobbled to the apt and Kevin carried most of the groceries to the bottom of the stairs at my apt when I realized I didn't have my keys. Thank fully, one of my apt-mates was at home sleeping, so we threw pebbles at her window to wake her up and let us in.

Of course the next day we had to drive back to Universal Studios and this time we rented a wheel chair. Got my keys back and had lunch at the Hardrock Cafe. Afterwards, went to see Harold and Kumar. It was a good movie. We browsed several stores, we brought two paper lamps, two decks of magic cards and issues of Batman.

The next day we headed to Irvine Spectrum center. I made reservations at the Irvine Improv to see John Pinette. The pasta there was delicious. We weren't quite ready to go home yet, so we went to see The Village. I didn't want to see it at first because most scary movies are stupid, but this one turned out alright. More of a thinker than a thriller.

Kevin left on Tuesday afternoon. Bummer.

At least Laura's around for another two weeks. We still have Buffy to go thru.

I can't get to lab on my own because of my crutches. So Eli's been picking me up in the morning on her way in and dropping me off on her way home. What a cool professor. I can't imagine any other professor doing this. This also provides me the opportunity to talk with her about grad school, my project, and other stuff. It's nice to be able to talk with her on a more informal level. Some days I just work from home. These days my project requires running a lot of simulations and synthesizing applications. I borrowed the software cd's and installed them on my laptop.

It's Laura's last week.

On Friday the dean of the ICS department, Dr. Debra Richardson, took the DMP participants out to lunch. There were six of us, Laura, Eli, Aimee, Aimee's mentor Professor Gloria Mark, Dean Richardson, and myself. Lunch was good and it was nice of the dean to treat us. After lunch, Eli, Laura and I went to Panera Bread to get coffee and pastries. Then Eli dropped off Laura at her dorm (Laura had given away her bike) and then she dropped me off at my apt.

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In other news, I registered for the Grace Hopper conference in Chicago this October. There will also be a DMP reunion in conjunction to Hopper. As part of registration, the reunion DMP students are asked to present a poster. Asked Eli what I should call this poster and she said, "Reconfiguration Overhead in Dynamic Task-Based Implementations on FPGAs." ( !!! ) I was going to call it "FPGA Configuration and Design." But hers is way better and more accurate.

I still have three more weeks to go.

Another week. Nothing new. Getting my work done. I hop around my apt because I can't walk normally. My good leg is getting buff and the other leg is starting to atrophy from the lack of exercise. My back and hips hurt from being off balance all the time. I'm really glad I stocked up on food. I haven't been able to go anywhere except for lab. At this point I'm completely dependant on frozen food, eggs and pasta.

Walking with crutches for the past four weeks has left me wanting to ride my bike again. I want to see the ocean and play in the sand. Want to be able to walk again without limping or hopping about. Gah. Yes, I've been getting frustrated by my crutches. But my work is going well. I'm basically wrapping up everything. Getting the last of the apps for Sudarshan, finishing my own experiments. I have an outline for my final presentation. I'm going to use most of the presentation to write my final paper. I have yet to think about a final design for the website. I was thinking something elaborate with pictures of FPGAs and lots of graphics, but I want something clean and simple. Simple is good.

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I asked Eli if Irvine gets any rain and she told me maybe ten days out of the entire year. Living in the Bay Area I'm not used to this much sun. Too much sun. Sun in the morning, sun in the afternoon, sun in the evening. The only good thing about this weather is the night. As hot as the days get, the nights are cool and crisp. They're gorgeous, perfect for walks after dinner. I want to sleep on the roof, with the city lights below, and the stars above, the night air clear, clean and cool.

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My roommate showed up. Apparently she's been studying abroad in England.

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Last week. I presented my last presentation and it went well. Originally I aimed for half an hour, but it ran nearly forty five minutes. The comments were good and I got corrections for a few mistakes. The biggest one was that there is a difference between the synthesis tools and the place and route tools. Using it for ten weeks and more I knew this but I didn't make the distinction in my presentation. I'm really glad Eli pointed it out because a truncated version of my presentation will be presented at Hopper as my poster.

Eli took Sudarshan, Love and me out to lunch at this Persian place on Wednesday. The food was interesting and the conversation much more so. We talked about mountain climbing, different cuisines, places to hang out in Irvine, grad schools and teaching courses.

That evening, I caught a cab to the airport. I didn't pack anything, just grabbed my backpack and my laptop. Slept thru the flight back Oakland. It was good to be home. I woke up to rain the next morning. What a great way to wake up. Kevin and I had already decided we would drive down, he would help me pack my stuff and then we'd drive back up. There was no way I could pack and lug all my stuff to the airport on crutches.

So Saturday morning we borrowed Kevin's parents' van, and head out to LA. It took us about five and a half hours on highway 5. We packed like crazy. Because my roommate was in my room, we toughed it out on the couches in the living room for some sleep at night. Dragged one of the arm chairs and stuck it at the end of the sofa. Love to see these engineering skills at work. We were stuck cramped into one and a half sofas, and by the time morning rolled around our necks were in agony.

This diagram shows how cramped we were. Kevin, the lucky sod, called out the long part of the sofa first and I got the armchair. We had pillows, but it was such an awkward angle.

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So we finished the last of the packing and headed to IHOP for a late lunch. We were supposed to leave early in the morning, but we dithered until 3 PM. Originally I had planned for us to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway, it's a beautiful scenic route. Unfortunately, we got stuck in horrendous traffic by the beaches in LA. Horrid, horrid traffic. After an hour or so, the traffic finally let up. All the southern Californians made it to the beach parking lots and we rolled on our merry way. Until PCH suddenly stopped and turned into an entrance to a shopping mall lot in some small town outside of Ventura county. We backtracked to where the exit to 101 was and that was the end of our PCH adventure. Apparently there was a detour to PCH, but at this point we were too annoyed to go find it. We drove through the evening and got back home around midnight.

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It's good to be back home finally. My ten weeks in Irvine were an excellent adventure. I learned lots of new things: grad school, loads of stuff about FPGAs, new people, new places. I have to finish up my website, get last comments from Eli about my final paper and the slides I'm going to use for my poster at Hopper. It'll be pretty neat to see a lot of DMP participants at the reunion.

[To the Top]

As I finish the last details on this site, I've decided to include my comments on the Grace Hopper Conference. Today is Oct 5, Tuesday, and I'm leaving for Chicago tomorrow morning. I'll be flying back on Saturday evening.

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It is now Thursday night. Or rather early, Friday morning. 12:34 AM. My feet hurt. What a day. My flight was four hours, not too bad. As I waited for my suitcase at baggage, I noticed that the woman to my left looked vaguely familiar. It turns out yes, we did know each other. Her name is Megan Thomas, she's a former Berkeley graduate student, she's doing post-doc work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. I told her I was going to take the train to the hotel and she said she'd come along. We took the train, got to the Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown, found out that there were two Embassy Suites in Chicago, and we were at the other one across town. Grr. So we got a cab, it took less than ten minutes to get to the Lakefront one. Our rooms are right next to each other. The conference is at the Sheraton which is on the next block.

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The reception/poster session was okay. I didn't know a lot of people, so I hung out with Megan, made idle chit chat with the people around me. We left around 8 or 9 PM to return to our suites. My roommate hadn't yet arrived, her flight was scheduled to arrive at 9:47 PM. So I watched TV till she came. Her name is Mehwish N and she's a fellow DMPer. She just graduated from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne with a combined B.S.- M.S. in CS. (Yes I had fun typing that. Try saying that fast ten times.) Anyway, we ended staying up till 2 AM, we hit it off right away. Of course since we'd slept so late, when we woke up at 6 something, we were bleary eyed. I hadn't printed my poster slides (for the DMP reunion), and Mehwish needed to reprint her slides, so we set off to find Kinkos so early in the morning. We ended up walking around and around with nary a sight of Kinkos, but we did meet another Hopper conference attendee, the Turkish ambassador for ACM-W, Reyyan Ayfer from Bilkent University, who walked with us to the Sheraton.

The different sessions were interesting. I think the ones that I got the most out of were: Finding the Ideal Job by Jaye Girouard from Intel and Robotics->Graphics->Robotics by Dr Jessica Hodgins from CMU. The banquet was fun as well. One of the research scientist who got an award couldn't be there to accept the award and in her stead one of her graduate students accepted it. I didn't catch her name but she read the speech that her advisor had written. She was an excellent speaker, I hope I can speak as well as her. After the banquet they had set up a dance floor in another room. That was a lot of fun!. Imagine a bunch of professors, a few executives, a few students, a bunch of grad students all boogying down to retro. I even had a conga line going. Eventually it grew to be so big, that I had to decide if I wanted to take it around the big room or if I should just curve in, so as the song was winding down, I lead the conga line inwards into a big spiral, I think it was three or four spirals deep when we stopped. I wanted a picture of it, but I couldn't find anyone who had taken a picture. (If anyone has a picture of the conga line from Hopper 2004, please email it to me. I'd really appreciate it.)

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It is now Sunday afternoon and I got back from Chicago last night at 9 PM.

Friday was less active than Thursday. You can get an idea of what Thursday was like just by looking at the large number of simultaneous sessions [Hopper agenda]. Friday was more relaxed. And in response I was also relaxed about attending the sessions. Mehwish and I woke up a bit later than anticipated and we missed the majority of the keynote address in the morning. We got the tail end of From Robotics to Biomolecules: Computing about the Physical World by Professor Lydia Kavraki from Rice University and it sounded good. Well anyway, we started the day with Compiling Quantum Computations into Elementary Operations by Krysta Svore from Columbia University. It was interesting in the beginning and the end, and like all technical talks, it got vague in the middle with all the details. After that we went to Data Visualization of Invisible Airflow Hazards During Helicopter Takeoff and Landing Operations by Cecilia Aragon from UC Berkeley. Cecilia's presentation was a lot of fun. Basically she's creating a program that allows pilots to see if there's any dangerous air turbulence that could drastically affect the way a pilot can handle her or his craft. I love attending sessions such as these, they're practical and useful, and make a huge difference towards saving someone's life.

After Cecilia's session, Mehwish and I trooped off to find the elusive Kinkos. On the way out I saw Belinda Chin, a fellow Berkeleyan, and she joined us in our quest in hopes that we would get lunch at the end. So found Kinkos inside one of the hotels, I forget if it's the Hilton or the Hyatt Regency or some other place. Got our (very expensive) color copies, got some lunch on the way and headed back to the Sheraton.

In the afternoon we went to the session Inside Intel: Re-Imagining Computing for the 21st Century by Dr. Genevieve Bell from Intel. It was fantastic. Dr. Bell is an anthropologist and she tells Intel how to better use their technology to serve people's needs (at least that's what I remember her saying). She's a great speaker, she spoke quickly and she had a lot to say and she was funny. Dr. Bell talked about how in the Western world, technology is used to redefine or modernize people. But in the Eastern world, technology is not necessarily a way to reform society as much as it is a tool that is subverted to society's needs. For example in Indonesia, the majority of the people are of the Islamic religion, so there are cell phones that show the user the direction of Mecca. Or in India, the most visited website to this day remains the Indian Times matrimonial site (used to find brides and grooms for those of-age). I'm sure there a couple more examples Dr. Bell talked about, but those are the ones I remember. She also said that we in the west tend to split off technology and religion, but in the rest of the world that separation doesn't exist. Even in the US cell phone providers provide millions of Christians quotes or paragraphs from the Bible as a daily service. It never occurred to me think about how technology would be used in religion.

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After Dr. Bell's talk, Mehwish and I met Dr. M. Bernardine Dias from Carnegie Mellon University. She's the director of TechBridgeWorld, an initiative aimed at using technology in third world countries to make people's lives better. What a wonderful organization. We couldn't talk to her too long because we had to hurry to set up our posters at the DMP reunion. So we said a regretful goodbye and hurried to the Swissotel across the bridge.

The poster session and the dinner afterwards was excellent. It was fun to hear about the different experiences people had. Mehwish, Mehwish Ahtasham, another girl and I sat next to the people from the Computing Research Association. (Try as I might I can't remember the name of the girl I talked with thru the dinner.) I think we four were the last people to leave. Outside we walked slowly taking pictures of the water and the buildings around. Eventually the girl I was talking to had to leave, she was visiting with a friend, and Mehwish, Mehwish Ahtasham and I hung out at the Sheraton lobby from 9 PM to 2 or 3 AM. Mehwish (my roommate) and I decided that we would build robots or discuss robotics as pen pals. It was great. We eventually left when the lobby got too cold.

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On Saturday morning we were in absolutely no shape to head to the last session. We really wanted to, but we were pooped. I wanted to visit the Navy Pier, so went hunting for it. I had an hour before I had to be back at the hotel to make it to the airport on time. We went around a whole block instead of going straight down the street. I knew I'd seen the 'This Way to the Navy Pier' sign somewhere. Oh well. We stopped a lady walking her Maltese to ask for directions and chatted a bit. We did get to the Pier, but we walked quickly through the place taking pictures. I had to get souvenirs (or else face his wrath) for Kevin and the rest of mine and hi family. By the time we got back to the Embassy Suites, I had barely enough time to pack quickly and head to the Sheraton to catch a shuttle to Midway.

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I would have liked to stay longer. We didn't get to see the place around and I feel that I didn't get much time to hang out or meet new people. I'm glad Mehwish was my roommate, I'll have to plan to room with her next Hopper. When we get our robotics thing going, I'll try to remember to post them here.

Okay so about the thumbnails, I realize I had something different for the pictures from DMP compared to the ones below. It's just that I don't have the time to go through each picture and find an interesting spot to zoom in on and create a separate interesting mini-pic for each picture. And I'm sure the viewers of this site will appreciate seeing what the picture looks like, even if it's itty-bitty. As I'm not aiming for any sort of site contest, so I'm going to leave this slight inconsistency. Also please note some of the pictures will have a weird reddish tint, this is because using flash indoors with dim lighting looked worse so these are pictures without flash. Enjoy.