Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and I have to say that the thing I am most thankful for now is the wonderful start of my independent life.  I have a job, and it looks like I am getting noticed for the effort I am putting into the project.  There are plenty of ropes to learn, and I am slowly receiving the training I need.

After paying off my student loans, I got myself a Dell UltraSharp U2410 and an Ergotron LX Dual swing arm.  Installing it turned into a weekend project as I made my desk just so.  Well, here’s “just so.”  You’ll see in the below pics that most of my wiring is hidden on the sides.

Remember this addition to the Texas Constitution that got approved over 3:1 back in 2005 (Proposition 2, adds Section 32 in the Texas Constitution)?

The constitutional amendment providing that marriage in this state consists only of the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

During one of my rounds through the Internet before heading off to work, I came across this article: http://www.star-telegram.com/local_news/story/1770445.html It became a conversational bit I carried to work with me one day, and I got some very good discussion out of it.  Some think it’s a politician’s ploy to get support from the LGBT community.  One person believes that if this were to come up in court, the intent of the law will settle things and precedent would follow.  There was a consensus, however, that it could’ve been worded better and more well-thought-out.  Before banning gay marriage, perhaps divorce and infidelity should be made illegal first.

I’ve been told to lighten up.  Whoever tells me that needs to give me a flashlight.

Today is my one-month milestone of employment, and things have been almost everything I wanted (Yo Sunny, I’m happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Monster.com has some of the best jobs of all time!  Some of the best jobs of all time!)* in terms of the support I have been getting, the work I have been doing, and my work-life balance.  When I first interviewed at the company, I thought that the corporate culture was uptight and there was not a laugh to be had.  I have to say that is simply not true and I can wear a smile to work everyday.  From the first day, they had me doing some real work on some of the most reliable military aircraft (Yo Sunny, I’m happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but BAE Systems has some of the best aircraft of all time!  Some of the best aircraft of all time!)*.  The technology may seem a bit old, but if it makes the aircraft a customer’s choice, that’s great.

Now that I have more free time, I have been spending time taking better care of myself by going on longer bike rides and am intending on riding the entire Silver Comet Trail.  It’s no Texas 4000, but the planning and execution of this trip will be something I take great pride in.  My bike ride this weekend was cut short by some FOD (Foreign Object Damage) puncturing my rear tire, forcing me to walk my bike home.  Nevertheless, I made good on my promise to some coworkers to see “the big chicken“:

Finally, as part of diversity week at work, we got to wear a pro sports shirt to work.  I showed up in my solar car polo to show off the sport that very few people can say have participated in, and it is something I take great pride in (Yo Sunny, I’m happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but UT athletics has some of the best sports of all time!  Some of the best sports of all time!)*

I will try to ride my bike again this weekend.  Hopefully, it will be FOD-free, and I hope to break my 14-mile mark.

* In case you didn’t get the joke, the “interruptions” were to parody Kanye West’s spectacle that so many got teed off about (reference).  The statements contained in said interruptions do not constitute my opinion.

It has been about a month since I signed my lease and about three weeks since I started working.  How’s life?

Work: My coworkers have been treating me very well, and are happy that I have been picking up steam fast and plugging away at their backlog of work already.  They have many stories, insights, and jokes to share.  I would often stay longer than I initially intended to, although I would do work at the same time for efficiency’s sake.

Social: This is one of the challenges I have been facing.  Most of my coworkers are twice my age, so I had some trouble meeting people people my age for the possibility of hanging out with them.  Once I get up to speed, I will have time to do some community service.

Financial: This is the biggest source of grief right now.  I am currently living paycheck-to-paycheck as I plug away at my student loans and spikes in spending while paying the bills, saving up for my new car and retirement all at the same time.  Per my calculations, I would generally have less than $ 150 per week after I deduct (in order of priority):

1. Income taxes (federal and state)
2. Contributions to 401k
3. Paying back my parents
4. Paying back my student loan
5. Medical insurance, vision insurance, and dental insurance
6. Recurring expenses (rent, utilities, and insurance)
7. Transfers to savings (simulated payments for a car and cell phone bill)

With the help of GNUCash (open-source, also available in Windows) and OpenOffice.org Calc, I am now tracking my expenses accurate to the penny!  For those of you still in college, enjoy it while you still can — once you get out in the real world, you will have a lot more to worry about.

I have been doing a lot of traveling lately, starting July 31:

• July 31: 15-hour flight from Hong Kong (HKG) to Newark (EWR).  A 6-hour layover turned into an 8-hour layover.  Afterwards, 4-hour flight from EWR to Houston (IAH).
• August 2: Drove to Austin, TX for NIWeek.
• August 6: Drove back to Houston, TX to prepare my move to Marietta, GA.
• August 9: Began drive to Marietta, GA.  Stopped at Meridian, Mississippi.
• August 10: Finished drive to Marietta, GA.

That easily adds up to over 10,000 miles of traveling over the course of not more than two weeks!  It was great to see the solar car again.  It was even nicer to have it get front and center in the exhibition floor!

I arrived in Marietta, GA tired, but still had enough strength left to sign the leasing papers and unload my stuff from my car.  It was only after I stepped into my apartment for the first time that I realized how big 892 sq. ft. is.  My new apartment is easily twice as big as my apartment in Austin, and it costs me only $ 599/mo.  As if I did not do enough for the day, I got some great Internet service from Clear.  I was originally getting Comcast, but I had to wait a couple days because the previous tenants did not disconnect their service (which is bad for them because they probably paid for service they didn’t get).

Clear is a WiMax service available only in a few select areas.  I received information about them in my welcome packet from my landlord.  The sales agent answered most of my questions to my satisfaction, and I had her come to my place to give me a demo.  I started with a speed benchmark on a demo unit rated for 3 Mbps down / 500 Kbps up.  Astonishingly, it provided the as advertised speeds.  SOLD — I got the 6 Mbps down / 500 Kbps up plan for $ 40/mo.  To save myself grief in case I need to move and need to disconnect my service, I chose a month-to-month plan and swallowed all the up-front costs.  As soon as she left, I was able to plug in and immediately start surfing.

What did I do in my two days here?  I spent most of my time putting stuff up, buying essentials, and exploring the city in general.  I start work next Monday.  Please wish me luck.

By the time my tour of South Korea was over, I had 916 photos on my camera.  I managed to cull that down to a slightly more sane 390.  Below is a little teaser of the photos I took.  I shot 99% of these using my AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens.  When people took pics of my family, people were in disbelief when we told them that the camera does not have a zoom.

My parents are in Taiwan now, so I will be babysitting my little brothers for the next week.  It will be very interesting.  We will be going around Hong Kong with family and friends to see various sights and go to Ocean Park.

The flight going from Newark-Liberty airport (EWR) to Hong Kong (HKG) is approximately 15 hours.  I do not think any of my classmates have taken such a long flight!   I suppose it is yet another step towards preparing for work if I have to travel and all.  To minimize the effects of jet lag, I set my clock to my destination time zone and tried to sleep at that schedule.

As of the writing of this entry, it’s been 24 hours since my family and I touched down in Hong Kong.  My strategy of dealing with jet lag has been working so far, although the exhaustion from just sitting in the seat is still getting to me.  In the 15 hours I was in the plane, I listened to my podcasts, watched Back to the Future, plugged away at the backlog of IEEE magazines I had, and (obviously) slept.

We visited family today and will be going to South Korea tomorrow evening.  I’ll update this blog in a week or so.  Until then, enjoy this image:

Attention to detail is a sign that one would make a good engineer.  It is also a good trait to have when doing anything that will be facing a massive crowd, such as anything having to do with the media.  The reason I say this is because I received an email from my alma mater’s alumni association providing me with my one-year membership.  Does anybody see what’s wrong with this picture given that I graduated a little bit less than one month ago?

This was one week ago.  They have since corrected it to say “Class of 2009.”

Unfortunately, things got so hectic that I have been unable to update my blog in a long time.  The good news is that I still have a pulse (hence the title).

Read the rest of this entry »

Part I

Full disclosure: This is an informal exploration I personally took on.  There are many factors I may not have taken into account and bits of data I do not have access to.

As I said last week, I would like to take an informal look at the effectiveness of Earth Hour.  I began by writing a VI that would log some real-time information from the ERCOT* web site.  This VI would fetch the page from the site every minute, parse it to find the relevant bits, and then write the information to a file.  A picture of the VI is below:

Of course, the most interesting bit is the system demand.  That is, how much power is being consumed at any given time?  I graphed that below:

For those interested in other bits of data (frequency, total generation, amount of power generated by wind, etc.) can download the spreadsheet here: Results.xls

Since ERCOT covers 75% of Texas, I also found the 28 most-populous counties, which contains 75% of the population (2000 census) and found the temperatures on the hour before, the hour during, and hour after Earth Hour using NOAA’s** web site.  On average, there was about a 6-degree drop in temperature from 7:50 until 9:50.

Why is there a downward trend in your graph?  Is Earth Hour a success? The downward trend could be part of an normal load profile, which is the trend in power consumption for most days.  Until there are other sets of data to compare the above graph to, it is too early to tell.

What do you think? From what I’ve heard, most of the load on the electricity grid consists of motors (rotating machines).  They are everywhere (refrigerators, ceiling fans, air conditioning units, elevators, etc.).  Turning off lights may not make too big of an impact.

*ERCOT – Electric Reliability Council Of Texas.  It covers 75% of Texas in terms of area and 85% in terms of load.

On Saturday, March 28th at 8:30 PM (local time zone), many will be participating in Earth Hour by turning off unnecessary loads for one hour to raise awareness for the environment.  This sounds great in concept, but many people, including myself, are skeptical about how effective it is.  For me, I wonder why not switch unnecessary loads off all the time?  After all, there are financial incentives for doing so (as demonstrated by my dinky $ 15.60 electricity bill for 131 KWh of electricity last month).

With my newfound knowledge in power systems, I have several questions:

1. Will system demand drop and stay down during Earth Hour, proving its effectiveness?
2. Will generation correspondingly drop and stay down during Earth Hour, proving its effectiveness?
3. Will the spike of loads coming back online after Earth Hour compromise system stability?

To address these questions, I wrote a LabVIEW VI that will pull real-time information from the ERCOT web site (found here: http://mospublic.ercot.com/ercot/jsp/frequency_control.jsp) and log them to a spreadsheet.  I intend to log data on Saturday, March 28 from 8:20 PM to 9:40 PM, as well as Saturday, April 4 at the same time range.  I personally wish the participants the best of luck (i.e. answers to #1 and #2 are both “yes”) and that nothing bad will happen (i.e. answer to #3 is “no”).  A good indication to system stability on the real-time information page is the frequency.  If it were to drop below a certain point, “load shedding,” more commonly known as “rolling blackouts,” could occur.

While I am here, here are some things I do to save electricity:

1. Replace the light bulbs with CFLs.  Even then, turn off lights when they’re not in use.
2. Air conditioning: @Home = 78F / Away = 82 F
3. Keep the ceiling fan on
4. Heating: @Home = 68F / Away = 62F
5. Turn off everything when going away for more than one day (e.g. it’s networking gear)