Dmitry

Right now there is a Canada Post Xpresspost package sitting in my room, addressed to me. It was mailed from the UW Bookstore (or, more correctly, UW Shop, even though the label reads the bookstore) on Monday and contains a UW branded travel mug and a plush goose. Inside there is a receipt for items + shipping, paid for using somebody's Visa credit card (not mine). No other comments/notes, and no name of the purchaser mentioned.

The package and invoice mention my full name and correct postal address, which makes me think this is not a mistake. I guess I have a stalker?

Of course, my birthday is coming up, so it is kind of explainable, although I have no idea who would bother ordering me a gift and shipping it from a store I can walk over to.

So I spent like 8 hours this weekend trying to troubleshoot a memory issue on my desktop. First, I noticed that OS X doesn't always boot up, and some stuff doesn't work; then Windows started rebooting on its own with a brief glimpse of BSOD now and then. I recently replaced a motherboard chipset fan, for which I had to take out the motherboard, so I figured something's not plugged in right, or (worst case scenario) my MoBo is screwed up.

So I ran memtest, and it gave me a bunch of read/write errors. It also seemingly indicated a problem with slot A1. I tried swapping some chips and it appeared that anything I plug into A1 fails. But then it started failing even with A1 empty, which got me thinking there is a general problem with memory bus. After some tweaking of the memory clocks in BIOS, this seemed to work again, so I left it as is. But the next day (Saturday night), things started crashing again. I did a bunch of tests with seemingly unexpected results (it works, then it doesn't, then it works again, for the same memory chip/slot combination). After a while, I found the problem.

A botched stick of RAM. Not in A1, but in B2.

As a result, I learned two lessons:

• memtest can lie when it gives you memory address to physical stick mappings.


• It's always a bad stick of RAM. Don't assume anything else until you eliminate the simplest potential cause. I made that mistake and wasted a part of my weekend chasing ghosts.

I'm also really tired after a week of midterms. Something also needs to be done about my tendency to stay up late, as it doesn't fit well with a mandatory 8:30am MWF class. And, I should have spent more time studying for Calc 3. 63% isn't very impressive, especially when it's worth 30 percent of my final grade.

I've finally performed the first major upgrade on my desktop (the one I got in 2006). Having a socket 939 AMD board, I've snapped one of the last available dual-core S939 Athlon 64's, and two gigs of DDR RAM of NewEgg.



Installing the RAM was a snap. The CPU took some more time (I had to fight the heatsink to get it off so that I could reach the processor socket). Nevertheless, everything worked perfectly right away, so here I am now, sitting with 3 gigs of RAM and deciding what to do with all the extra processing power I've got. Just for the heck of it, I've been running SETI@home for the past few nights. Probably the coolest thing about their tool is the screensaver which shows a bunch colourful graphs.

Now I need to install Parallels so I can run Windows apps (especially ASRC) out of OS X (yes, I'm running OS X on my generic AMD desktop).

I think I should make it a rule to write brief updates more often, say once every other day. Looking back at my LJ-posting pattern, this goal is a bit far-fetched, but we'll see. I'm also trying to keep blog.denisen.net going as well.

This term I am back in school. I'm taking (in course-alphabetical order):
CO350 - Linear Optimization
CS343 - Concurrent and Parallel Programming
CS365 - Models of Computation
MATH247 - Calculus 3 (Advanced)
PHIL255 - Philosophy of Mind

At the same time, I'm doing all these other things:

• MathSoc computing


• Getting nominated as a MathSoc VPA (not my initiative, so I can rightfully claim that I've been chosen by people as opposed to having volunteered myself to this position)


• participating in quiz bowl


• learning to play the piano


• going swimming regularly (or at least trying to)


• flightsimming and air traffic control on VATSIM (time permitting)


• learning more about photography

Oh, and I'm coming back to RIM this summer to work on the Operating Systems group, so no job hunting for me this term. Yay!

(cross-posted from blog.denisen.net)

This morning I went flying at the Region of Waterloo International airport (yes, KW does have its own international airport, with regular service to Calgary, Detroit and Ottawa). Specifically, I got to spend half an hour at the controls of a Cessna 152. This is something I've been meaning to do for a while, but either 1) I kept forgetting or occupying myself with other things; or 2) weather was seemingly too bad. I picked a $50 introductory flight at the Waterloo-Wellington Flight Centre. This is probably as close as I can get to flying a real aircraft for a while, what with my university tuition fees and such. But I figured I should at least see if getting licensed to fly single-engined piston airplanes is something worth saving money for; Now I'm convinced that it's totally worth it.


I actually ended up doing more things in a plane that I thought I would be allowed do, given my lack of real-world experience. First I did some taxiing with turns; then the instructor lined up the plane with the runway centerline, and I took control and put her in the air, maintaining a steady 70-knot climb to three thousand feet. Afterwards we did some straight-and-level flying, turns, descending and climbing; then we headed back to the airport, and I got to take over the controls once again on the base leg, turning her onto final, lining up with the runway, and (with some assistance from my instructor) bringing her to runway threshold pretty much up to the point of touchdown.

I was actually quite surprised at how natural flying felt to me; I guess my vast flight simulator experience really counts for something! It certainly helps if you know how (at least in theory) things are supposed to work; I felt completely calm and non-nervous throughout the entire flight. One of the curious effects of my flighsimming experience is that I ended up staring at and relying on the gauges (rather than looking out the window) seemingly more than I was supposed to; this correlates with the comments I've read saying that flight sim is really useful for instrument training, but not so much for visual flying due to awkward angles, fixed camera views and lack of sensory feedback (i.e. feeling the turns/climb/descent with your butt). To add to that, I've also found it quite challenging to determine our geographic position visually, although morning fog might have had something to do with it. Another artifact of my being used to flying commercial jets at high speeds in FS - not expecting to see traffic on the runway, and calling tower for landing clearance when we are on a short final a hundred meters from runway threshold!

After landing I got to take a few photos, and picked up a few goodies at their front desk, including a navigational chart and approach plates for Ontario (for free, since they're outdated - useless for real world flying, but quite acceptable in flight sims).

My overall experience: best 50 bucks ever spent.

It took them a while to get the probability grades up (although not as long as PHYS121 last year), but I finally know my average for the term.

CO342 Graph Theory - 100
CS341 Algorithms - 97
CS350 Operating Systems - 94
ENGL306A Linguistics - 85
STAT230 Probability - 91

The top two grades are not good indicators of my absolute performance, as they seem to have bell curved them quite a bit. On the contrary, the STAT230 grades apparently weren't adjusted at all as the prof (according to one of my friends) didn't even seem to understand what the term "bell curve" means.

Well, the good news is, I am still on dean's list.

I somewhat dislike the exam time, especially the days before I have a bunch of exams. In practice, I don't get much studying done, as I either already know most of the material, or it is fairly easy to be comprehended quickly. Yet, if I don't study, I get a feeling of guilt, especially seeing all the people at the DC library and such. As a result, I end up procrastinating the whole lot, whereas I could have done a lot of non-exam-related work. *sigh*

In other news, I almost got into a car accident on Thursday (not due to my fault). Thankfully, the actual collision was averted, although I did feel uncomfortable for a few seconds.

In other news, I have a car, although it's hardly news as mostly everybody reading this already knows about it.

So after having spent a weekend deciding on where I'm gonna work this fall, it seems that I've come up with a final decision - I'll be working at RIM, writing and debugging code for DSP firmware. I've always wanted to try out low-level programming, so it should be interesting. It also appears that pretty much everyone I know will be in Waterloo this fall, and staying here as opposed to moving elsewhere somewhat alleviates the problem of finding a place to live and move my stuff every four months.

My other options were FileMaker, who are a subsidiary of Apple, IBM Canada (Eclipse platform) in Toronto, and Next Level Games in Vancouver. The decision kind of boiled down to FileMaker vs. RIM, as I decided that I need to take a break from Java, and I didn't feel like moving across the country once again. Choosing between FileMaker and RIM was kind of hard, as both jobs had a lot of pros/cons (such as salary, the possibility of exploring Ottawa, and a hefty discount on MacBooks for FM, and proximity, staying with friends and job novelty for RIM). In the end, I think the RIM job (no joke/pun intended) would be more interesting for me at this point, considering that I've never done low-level development before, and there seem to be more opportunities to learn new stuff there.

Still, choosing is hard. I don't actually think I've ever had to make a decision in such close-to-a-tie situation, and it feels sad that I have to forgo some of the options that I'm presented with, but I guess life is all about making compromises. On the upside, my choice will only affect the next 4 months of my life, so I can't capitally screw up my life by making a wrong decision.

Oh, and if you're reading this and it's before 1pm Monday June 18th, you still have a chance to overturn my decision as that's when the final job rankings are submitted.

I'm back in Waterloo, and all my grades are finally up.

( Look at them if you want )

This term I'm taking

• CS341 - Algorithms


• CS350 - Operating Systems


• CO342 - Graph Theory


• ENGL306A - Linguistics


• STAT230 - Probability

I am home once again. The two flights here were rather short and uneventful, although I did have some fun wandering around DTW for 4 hours. Picture/video report will follow as soon as I get back to Waterloo and onto my own desktop machine.

My final grades that have been published so far are as follows:

• CS240 - 96


• CS245 - 100


• MATH245 - 83 (WTF?)

I am still waiting on CS246, MATH249, and Physics. Physics is the only one I am actually concerned about now, as I screwed up the final badly (seriously, I did), mostly due to not having prepared enough. Although, coming in with a 90-ish, I'm not sure what the final grade is gonna be. In fact, MATH245 and PHYS122 were the only finals that I found pretty hard.