Toothpaste results and Hitchcock

First, the new Colgate toothpaste seems to be working out nicely. The taste and texture are fine...just as long as it's not too gooey and doesn't have some horrible flavor like Orange. I also like the little flip top that keeps me from having to fumble with a screw-on lid early in the morning (when coordination and patience are...low). Way to go, Bryan.

So, I had this idea that I would document my day at school, but it turned out to be hard to take even remotely interesting pictures. That's because I really just sit in my cube most of the day and draw on my whiteboard. I thought about scattering some books on my desk, opening my notebook to an impressive page with lots of equations and arrows, putting something interesting on my computer screen, and basically staging a workspace photo that makes it look like I live in a vortex of high-tech invention (you know, like the backdrop of a Discovery Channel interview with a guy in a lab coat...the lighting is dark and blue-ish and you see lasers and twirling DNA models). Anyway, I didn't do that because it would be a lot of work. But I did manage to take a couple pics during my bike ride to school in the morning.

This first one is me riding down Sand Hill road towards campus. The bike lanes are nice and wide, and the traffic lights respond to bikes as well! For artistic effect, I held the camera at my waist so that the handle bars were in the photo. Also, the pink building to the right that you can barely see is a Ronald McDonald House (the only one I've ever seen). So when you put money in the little box at McDonald's, it really does go somewhere.

This picture is actually on campus. On the left is the William Gates Computer Science building, and to the right is the Paul Allen Center for Integrated Systems (aka CIS) where I work. All in all, this was a pretty average day. Lots of sitting in my cube. I attended some good presentations by several people from The University of Twente in The Netherlands. They are in town for a conference next week in SF, which I'll attend along with most of my group. It's actually a pretty major conference for Electrical Engineers, but it always seems low-key when it's in your back yard.

At the end of the day, LL and I met up with some folks from school to have dinner and see The 39 Steps, by Alfred Hitchcock. The movie was very good, I thought. Lots of intentional and unintentional humor (like the helicopter special effects...you'd have to see it...)

So here is everyone who went to the movie. From left to right is Fernando, Alireza, LL, me, Kim, Jim and Pedram. Alireza and I are working together on the same chip. Fernando and Pedram (like Alireza) are both in the same research group as I am. Jim is "half way" in the group (my advisor is his co-advisor), and Kim is his girlfriend.

Kim also happens to be a neuroscientist at Stanford, and she said that recent construction near where she works is freaking out all the lab animals (they can apparently sense all the vibrations from the heavy machinery). This is actually a big problem for all the students who are testing with these animals, because their results will be influenced by sudden changes in behavior resulting from rumbling and bulldozing. Needless to say, Alireza and I are quite happy to work on a chip that is indifferent to all-but-fairly-direct interaction with a bulldozer.