Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I wish all of you a happy, healthy holiday and new year!

It is indeed merry for me - my 4.0 GPA continues for another semester! If I can hold on for one more semester, then I won't have gotten anything other than an A since some time before high school, all the way through college, since I'll be graduating with my BS in electrical engineering in May. Isn't that just sick? I guess I work too hard.

Here's a New Picture

I'm wearing my new shirt, what do you think? :)

Auto-Save, Purchases and Randomness

First of all, Blogger is a Google company, right? How difficult would it be for them to implement the same auto-save features that Gmail has, then? I spent about twenty minutes writing this post when my web browser decided to die. Ah well. I guess I'll just post a shorter version of my original ranting. Plus, I'm writing this in TextEdit before copying and pasting to the web interface this time. In the eternal words of George W. Bush, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

So, first the purchases! Yesterday I picked up a couple new books - Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Unfortunately, they will get added to the ever-growing queue of books-to-read. I keep telling myself that I will get to pleasure reading eventually - if only I could believe myself! Right now, I'm reading Gene Wolfe's Shadow & Claw. I'm really enjoying the style of the book, but I'm just getting started. I also bought a t-shirt for myself and some gifts for the fam.

I'll also mention briefly that it turns out I ranked EECS 426, MOS integrated circuit design, this semester. I had the high score on the homework, second exam, second design project, and the high score overall. I attribute this fact to the volume of material we covered in Dr. Young's EECS 344, integrated circuit analysis and design, last year. Having taken 344 definitely put Case undergrads at an advantage over the grad students from other schools.

And one more thing... it turns out that Dr. Tabib-Azar won't be teaching EECS 422, solid-state electronics II, in the spring because he has to develop a SAGES course, instead. Thanks, SAGES.

So, here's my (tuesday-thursday only!) schedule for the spring:

For MS:
EBME 427 Movement Biomechanics & Rehab 3CR Dr. Kirsch
EECS 434 Microfabrication 3CR Dr. Mehregany

EECS 651 Thesis MS 4CR
EECS 500 Colloquium 0CR

For BS:
EECS 396L Mobile Robots 4CR Dr. Newman
EECS 314 Computer Architecture 3CR Dr. Swarup Bhunia

With these courses, I will be on track to graduate with my BS in May - heck yeah. I will also only need to register two grad-level courses after next semester to count towards my MS degree. Grad school might actually be affordable! We'll see.

Anyway, that's it for now. Check here again soon (or subscribe to my RSS feed) for my next rant - and overall semester grade results (hopefully)!

::end transmission::

Half Way There!

Phew! My two grad-level courses are done, and I got A's in both of them! Two more classes to go - my ENGR 200 Statics & Materials midterm is tomorrow morning, and then I have the rest of the week to work on the take-home exam for EECS 351 Communication Systems. This has been a long semester, but it's almost over.

Which means... lots of time to work on research over "break." I ordered some parts from Digi-Key for my project yesterday. Thank goodness for Digi-Key. This week, I need to design and fab a PCB for my test circuit, take some measurements (I get to learn how to use the laser vibrometer - sweet!), and keep on chuggin'. I can't post about the details of what I'm working on, but I think it's really neat stuff. If When it works, it will make for an interesting paper, as well (exciting!).

Of course, I have several projects going on simultaneously, so keeping everything straight is making me crazy. It's a good thing I have my dry erase board to help me make sense of it all -- but I think I need a bigger board. ::grin::

In other news, I'll be visiting Kara at her parents' house in St. Louis in early January for a few days. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm sure we'll have a good time. Kara has her finals this week at UIUC as well, so good luck Kara!!

Oh, yeah! I do have a blog, don't I.

Last post: October. Not very timely, eh? Well, things have been crazy! Today was the last day of class, and the fabled Case finals gauntlet begins tomorrow, Saturday, at high noon. The showdown: me versus the EECS 600 (RF Integrated Circuits) final worth 50% of my grade. Of course, it might as well be worth 100% of my grade - if I do well, I will get an A. If I perform poorly... well... it depends on how poorly! I studied for this bad boy over 20 hours this week (about 10 hours today) and I feel pretty prepared for it. Hopefully I will be able to pick up on the tricks and nuances of the problems before the end of the test period.

After tomorrow, things are looking up. I have a take home exam for EECS 351 (Signal Processing for Communications) and the ENGR 200 (Statics and Strength of Materials) exam should be a cakewalk. I have a lot of research work to accomplish over break, but I know what I have to do, and it's a lot less stressful than 3-hour exams. EECS 426 (MOS IC Design) is totally done. I am reasonably confident I got an A in the course, but I won't know for sure until the second exam scores are posted. As long as I got a 75 or higher, I'm golden (and I think I did really well on it).

One thing I would like to mention... I think Case has forgotten how to clear sidewalks this year! In years past, the sidewalks were always shoveled and salted by the time I went to class. Now, some of them have 2" of ice for days after a snow storm. It's really unacceptable! I know several people who have fallen on the slick surfaces. Hopefully they'll get their act together again soon.

Okay, I need to get some sleep so I can attack this exam head-on tomorrow. I'll post the casualty report when I know the outcome!

--Bradley