Planet Olin

My life tends to oscillate between a desire to tell stories and a desire to live stories. At this one instant in time, I feel like putting down a few snapshots of the stories I've lived for the past few months - by and large, though, I'm running too fast and too far right now for storytelling.

Let's see. How to start... hmm.

Well, I turned 23, graduated, moved, started a new job, and got engaged at about the same time. I couldn't for the life of me tell you exactly why, but I'd been planning on asking Jenn to marry me at graduation for the better part of two and a half years. One day two and a half years ago, I got the idea in my head, and it hadn't left since. There was something about the idea... something about the celebration of transformation, the first step into a new life that seemed perfect for the occasion. Our relationship's been nothing if not epic - it seemed appropriate.

To tell the honest truth, the potential of that one moment in time played a role in keeping me at Olin. During the darkest points of my time there, when I was considering dropping out and not looking back, the thought of asking Jenn to marry me during my moment of triumph helped bring me back and keep me on track.

The first step was the ring. I had heard about Olin getting its class rings made at a place that could take any design and manufacture it on a computer-controlled lathe, which I thought was pretty damn cool. I started browsing their website and found a custom ring that had a ring of flames laser-etched into titanium around its circumference, and looked no further.

The next step was finding Jenn's ring size (because I'm ordering the ring... online). Of all the issues that I expected to run into, this didn't make my list. She doesn't wear jewelry on her hands. At all. There are no rings that I can use for sizing. I can't take her to a jewelry store and get her sized inconspicuously. Her female friends would have no idea whatsoever. I freaked out for a little bit.

And then I remembered that I was a mechanical engineer, and that she was a heavy sleeper. So I got out my calipers and measured the widest point on her widest finger joint while she was sleeping... to plus or minus five thousandths of an inch. You know. Like you do.

We get 15 words read out loud for us as we cross the stage at graduation. These range from the serious ("I couldn't have done this without...") to silly ("Hi Grandma!"). Mine started off by faking out the crowd - Lee Edwards sang out "Tain't whatcha do, it's the way hatcha do it!" and I danced across the stage to mild laughter. Then Lee waited until I had taken the diploma from President Miller and knelt to one knee, and followed up with "Jennifer Martinez, will you marry Gui Cavalcanti?"

The whole assembly went dead quiet for a few seconds. Jenn realized what had happened and yelled out "YES!" from her seat, and everyone stood up and started clapping and screaming. Elated, I sprung to my feet, grinned at President Miller and decided to jump the stairs at the end of the platform.

The grass was wet. I fell on my ass in front of the whole damn crowd. It didn't matter.

I knelt again after the ceremony, and Jenn tried the ring on for size. My heart skipped a few beats when she put it on her finger, but it fit perfectly. Score one for proper tolerances and fits.

And then all sorts of life happened. I took two weeks off after graduation, adventuring around with Jenn for awhile and then flying out to Canada to play farmer with Angie for a week. I decided to keep my break short because everyone at Boston Dynamics had made it very clear that they needed me back as soon as possible.

I started work on PETMAN the second I got back. In essence, it's a humanoid robot that is capable of doing jumping jacks, crawling, and marching to the same level of ability as a soldier. Its form has to fit within the skin of a 50th percentile male, which happens to be... well... me. So if the apocalypse comes and the robot soldiers all happen to look like me... well, you heard it here first.

Jenn and I moved to a luxurious new place in Somerville, only two blocks away from our old place. The new place feels... better than we deserve, almost. Granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors everywhere, four floors... it's incredible. We live with three other dancers that we met on the dance scene in Boston, one of whom also teaches Blues and two of which also DJ. We built a dance floor in the basement, and have since had a whole bunch of private lessons, practices and 50-some person parties.

The two months after work started were hard. Graduation, engagement, moving, and the start of a new job all happened rapid fire, and totally threw me off. I realize now that I had been surviving at Olin by always having something to fight - I just had to make it through this one class, survive this one semester, build this one last robot. Everything was a pitched struggle, just waiting for me to spend my energy. I was never settled, never content, and never comfortable there. That's not to say that I didn't have an incredible time at Olin, of course - it's just that the setting was never comfortable for me.

I didn't have anything to fight anymore. I was working a dream job. Jenn had said yes. I lived in a house with a dance floor in the basement. I ran two weekly dances in Boston. I couldn't really imagine life better.

And, of course, I was depressed. That's just how it goes. I was thinking really abstractly, really hard.

What do I do now? What's my purpose? What are my goals? How do I live my life? Who do I want to be?

And so on. Turns out all of these things get answered on their own once you put the questions aside and start experiencing life, but I didn't really understand that until Gill sat me down, told me that, and then told me to get over myself and start living about a month and a half ago. Gill, Jenn, and a bunch of close friends helped drag me out of the continuing funk that was threatening to destabilize me.

Since then, I've road tripped to New York, New Haven, Provincetown, Manchester, Bangor and Rumney. I've flown to Dallas and back with Jenn to take part in a dance workshop weekend called East Meets West, where young local dance instructors both teach classes and take lessons and critique from experienced national instructors. I've jumped out of a perfectly good airplane two and a half miles above the ground on a complete whim, and I STILL don't have the words to describe it. I've climbed raw cliff faces in New Hampshire with nothing but a rope trailing behind me and bolts I can choose to clip in to for safety above me, for no particular reason other than the tear-jerkingly gorgeous view from the top. I've fallen in love with Blues music all over again, and have been on a never-ending quest to find new artists and sounds that can make people move. I've been to the American Folk Festival in Maine (again on a whim) and discovered an entirely new style of teaching the dance I love. I've danced on a grassy lawn to jazz musicians, on a wooden floor tracked with mud at a folk festival, in Central Park to a busking New Orleans Blues band, in the B.B. King Blues Bar and Grill to an up and coming Blues band and more. I've met and connected with a diverse array of incredible new people, while maintaining  solid connections to the amazing people I'm lucky to be around. Any one of these sentences or phrases could easily make for several pages of stories, in true Arabian Nights fashion.

Right now, though, doesn't feel like the time to tell my stories. Right now I feel like making new ones.

This morning was my first launch, STSS Demo launched on a Delta II out of CCAFS on SLC-17B at 268:12:20:00 GMT.

Even though I got into work at 12:30 am and left around 9 am, with little sleep beforehand, it was an amazing experience to be apart of a launch team. I reported to work an hour before the DLSC call to station and began processing data soon after. All of the live data was released today with bundles of data to be processed in the coming weeks. Worldview is also quickly approaching followed quickly by WGS-3.

Go Delta II and STSS Demo! You never forget your first!

This NYTimes story reads so much like an Onion article, it's worrying.

Colonel Qaddafi — dressed in a brown traditional Libyan robe, embroidered vest and shirt, with a black pin of the African continent pinned to his chest — took about 17 minutes to get to the main point of his speech, which was a demand for an African seat on the Security Council.

He also suggested that those who caused “mass murder” in Iraq be tried; defended the right of the Taliban to establish an Islamic emirate; wondered whether swine flu was cooked up in a laboratory as a weapon; and demanded a thorough investigation of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

He offered to move the United Nations headquarters to Libya because leaders coming here had to endure jet lag and because the understandable security against another attack on New York by Al Qaeda was too stringent. And he repeated his longstanding proposal that Israel and the Palestinian territories be combined into one state called Isratine.

Although a red warning light illuminates after the 15-minute time limit, United Nations officials said they could not remember anyone interrupting a head of state to explain that the allotted time had expired.

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I have survived the first month of graduate school, and so far, I love it! I may still be in the "honeymoon phase," but I feel like I am finally in an environment where I belong. I am learning new material in classes; I am starting to get into a field of research; I set my own schedule; I am surrounded by intelligent people that are curious about the way things work; I am working with great people in my field. There is a lot of hard work ahead of me and this semester is definitely going to be tough, but for once I feel like I am on the right track.

Going from two years of working back to school is definitely challenging. So far, two things have stuck out as the most difficult: actually budgeting my money and remembering how to do math.

A graduate student stipend is definitely a livable salary, especially in a college town, but going from a comfortable entry-level engineer salary to a just-enough-to-live-on salary was a jolt to my spending behavior. I can no longer buy electronics/clothes/domain names/music on a whim or buy the nicer thing that costs twice as much just because I want it. I actually have to plan it out, and save up for the nice things I want. (Right now I am saving up for a nice rice cooker!) I thought it would be a trivial change, but I see why it is hard to go back to school full-time from a nice, comfortable, good-paying job.

After two plus years of only using basic algebra and arithmetic, I am really rusty on all the math I learned in undergrad. I feel like the Tinman. I need some math oil! I had forgotten linear algebra, matrix operations, Fourier series, Taylor series, Laplace transforms, trig identities, integration of periodic functions, integration by parts, and countless other mathematical topics/techniques that my classes expect me to remember. But, I am surprised how quickly it comes back. A little bit of looking up and reviewing goes a long way. I know it will take time to get completely up to speed, but I am confident I will get there (eventually). 

So far, grad school is going well. I like my classes, I like the people in my group, and I am actually starting to do real research! I have noticed that two things have not changed since undergrad: I still get really excited about classes/research and I definitely do not sleep enough. Speaking of which, I should probably go to bed...  ~_~

This is a cool idea that could be a PoE project. Or it could be done in a weekend if people could clear that much time.

The idea is to use existing wiimote to computer interfaces to poll a wiimote’s accelerometers (better if you can poll the additional attachment with an accelerometer too). Then you strap the wiimote onto a catapult or trebuchet you build. Then you fire it.

Then you run the acceleration data through some software. The software has a little physics engine. It’ll decide when the wiimote would’ve left the catapult and then plot out the rest of the wiimote’s trajectory. Then you have some walls or castles or armies or something that you’re killing/destroying and you get to see the results.

Instant awesome.

It’s interesting because it would be the only engineering video game I’m aware of since your only control on the game is by how you design and build your launcher.

If you’re in PoE: please go ahead and take my idea. Email me or something. I’m old Boris - ask around.
If you’re older: please convince someone in PoE to do this.

And so my Colorado adventure has begun. I am currently three weeks into my new job, and sitting in my new apartment.

I think I also may have one of the coolest jobs ever. I am currently the Delta Data Processor. If data comes off that rocket, I have my hands on it. I live for that data. It means I am deeply involved in launches, tests, and telemetry in general. I have a great group of guys I work with and things are so far going well.

I'm learning that new jobs are a lot of do-learn and figuring things out, but even if there are the roller coaster days, things have a positive slope. I've been dumped in the middle of processing data for GPSIIR-21 and was releasing files my second week on the job. This week I was preparing for the STSS-Demo launch targeted for the 18th. I have my days where I feel like I can handle things, and others where I feel like a complete idiot.

The scariest part of this experience has not been the job, but the move. I happily have Jackie by my side which has made this a little less harrowing, but turning my life upside down, leaving friends behind in Boston, family in Dallas, and starting a new job all at once is a lot to process at once. Thankfully I've had a two people who have been there for me the whole time, one at work, and one outside of work.

I'm excited to work launches and continue on this adventure. This may not have been the job I originally saw myself doing but I think things have worked out for the best. This is a great place to start and learn everything about a vehicle and its systems.

Now, if only I could find a couch that matches the dog.....

The fact that this article on pigeons carrying USB drives having higher bandwidth than South African broadband is causing any buzz at all is a bit disappointing. To be fair, the numbers in the article do make their ADSL sound like crap, but don't people understand the difference between bandwidth and latency by now?

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