Announcement: New Version of Dupyshon.com

The Dupyshon.com URL now points to the new version of the website. I welcome you comments and feedback. One of the ramifications of the new site is that I won't be posting to this particular blog for a while. If you enjoy reading these posts, please go to Dupyshon.com and click on the "Feeds" link (or just click here). There you can subscribe to any or all of the individual Dupyshon Network member sites. Eventually, I will come up with another feed that aggregates all of these blogs, but that will have to wait for a while. Enjoy the new version of the site!

[DupySite] Redesign Sneak Peek

If this website is getting too boring for you, take a look at KylanRobinson.com. This is a taste of what's to come, and is only a small portion of what I'm starting to call "The Dupyshon Network" or "The Dupyshon Universe" or "The DupyVerse" or "The Dupyshon Metaverse." Obviously there's still a lot of work to be done, I haven't even settled on a moniker yet!

[Kylan's Blog] Opening Ceremonies

Last night I watched the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It was interesting to see all of the teams carrying flags and representing their countries, and I was amazed to see so many foreign leaders in attendance. My family and I wondered if the hundreds of fireworks were affecting the already bad air quality in the city.

I really like the Olympics, so it will be fun to see all of the sporting events over the next month or so. I'm rooting for the USA, Rwanda, the Czech Republic, and India. In particular, I'd really like to see the decathlon because American Diana Pickler, a former Cougar, is competing in this event.

[DupySite] Site Redesign

Right now I'm working on a complete redesign of Dupyshon.com. That's why the activity on this blog has been pretty stagnant lately. Stay tuned, this will definitely be the best iteration yet of my website.

[Kylan's Blog] August Sprint

During the month of August, my group at SEL is doing a sprint. That means that all of the members of the group set "ambitious goals" for themselves and work extra hard (AKA overtime) to meet them. Doesn't sound very fun, but it helps keep everything on schedule.

[Kylan's Blog] The Kite Runner

I just finished reading The Kite Runner, a novel by Khaled Hosseini. The subject matter was depressing, but the book was very well-written. It gives the reader a good feel for Afghanistan's culture, history, and current situation.

[Kylan's Blog] Junior Miss at the Hospital

On Wednesday night, one of our Junior Misses hurt her wrist at practice. We decided to play it safe and take her to the emergency room for an X-ray. Turns out that it was just a bad sprain, but the doctors outfitted her with a pretty serious looking splint. It's the kind you have to wear in the shower and everything. For the competition, she'll be allowed to do a modified fitness routine so she won't have to put too much weight on that wrist.

[Kylan's Blog] Junior Misses

This week Kristen and I are hosting a couple of high school girls who are taking part in the Washington's Junior Miss competition. They came over tonight and will be staying with us through Saturday. By volunteering to be hosts, we earned two free tickets to the competition on Saturday night. Tonight we took the girls out to Tucci's and then went bowling at Zeppos.

[Kylan's Blog] New Radiator for the Caddy

Today we spent over $500 to have the radiator on the Cadillac replaced. Kristen and I have been meaning to get the car checked out for a while now, but we were forced to take action once I started noticing green fluid leaking onto the ground. I wish I could have just bought the parts and done the work myself, because most of that cost was due to the labor involved. The shop actually wanted to do an additional thousand dollars of work to get the Caddy into tip-top shape, but I think I'd rather try my hand at a couple of these repairs. First up: replacing the windshield wiper fluid pump.

[Kylan's Blog] Experimenting with FreeNAS

For a while now, I've wanted to set up a Network-Attached Storage (NAS) drive for Kristen and myself. It would allow us to consolidate our digital music libraries, store our pictures, back up our computers, share printers, and even serve web pages. After some looking around, I decided to install FreeNAS on my old Dell laptop. If it works out well, I might have to upgrade to an old desktop someday.

At the moment, the laptop is connected to our router via Ethernet. I can FTP and SSH into it, but I'm having a couple of minor issues with CIFS and SMB at the moment. The setup is pretty easy, and the administration GUI is very usable. This is definitely a valuable piece of free software.

[Kylan's Blog] Switchfoot at the Gorge

Tonight Switchfoot will be playing at The Gorge in George, WA for Creation 2008. Sadly, I won't be able to go. Hopefully they'll do this gig again next year. If so, I'll definitely be there.

[DupySite] Finally a Favicon

For the first time in Dupyshon.com history, I implemented a favicon for the site. You should be able to see it on your address bar when you go to the Home Page. As you can see, I'm not much of an artist!

[Phrasr] Jon Meyer

"A watched printer never prints."

[Kylan's Blog] Flobots

I actually really like this song: "Handlebars" by the Flobots.

[Kylan's Blog] Tacoma Reception

This weekend, Kristen and I went to Tacoma for our wedding reception. It was really fun to see our friends and family, especially the ones that weren't able to make it out for the wedding. Thanks to the generous preparation and planning of my mom, everything went really smoothly. It was held at ERC, with indoor and outdoor tables. Each table had flowers and wedding pictures. Taco soup was served, along with carrots, cookies, and watermelon. I made a slideshow of wedding pictures so the guests could get a feel for what the wedding was like. A lot of different people came. Both sides of my family, friends from high school, friends from WSU, and people from my parents' church. I think everyone had a good time.

[Kylan's Blog] West Side Wedding Reception

This Saturday (July 19th, 2008), Kristen and I are having a wedding reception on the West Side for our friends and family that couldn't make it the wedding. It's a casual event, and guests can "drop in" any time between 1PM and 4PM. We'll have a bit of taco salad, a slideshow of wedding pictures, and more. It will be held at my parent's church:

Evangelical Reformed Church
7435 South Madison
Tacoma, WA. 98409

This information is also available here. If you'd like to come, the only thing we ask is that you RSVP by contacting us. Hope to see you there!

[Kylan's Blog] Three Great Things

Three great things happened today!

1. Kristen and I have been married for one month.
2. We bought a car, a 2002 Ford Escort. (More details and pictures to come.)
3. Kristen got a job at Sunnyside Elementary as a third grade teacher!

Thank God, we are truly blessed.

[Kylan's Blog] Burger King Steakhouse

Every once in a while, a TV commercial comes along that actually makes me laugh. Why can't that happen more often?

[Kylan's Blog] Snap Fitness

For the past few weeks, I've joined Kristen for her workouts at Snap Fitness here in Pullman. The gym itself is simple and clean, and the staff is really nice. It feels good to be working out again, and a little bit of physical fitness is long overdue for me. I just copy Kristen's workouts, which are pretty intense with weights, abs, and cardio. Yesterday I ran a seven minute mile on the treadmill, so it looks like I'm on the right track.

[Kylan's Blog] First Batch of Wedding Pictures

I posted the first batch of our wedding pictures to KylanAndKristen.com tonight. These first photos are part of an album called The Setting. All of the pictures in this album help give an impression of where the wedding took place and how everything looked.

Over the next few days, I'll be finalizing the rest of the wedding picture albums. Every time I finish one, I'll post the highlights to KylanAndKristen.com. In the end, there should be about eighteen or nineteen albums in all. If you're too impatient for all of that, you can already view the entire collection here. Feel free to download the pictures and share them with others. If you have a Flickr membership, you can also print photos directly from their website.

Lastly, if you were at the wedding and you brought a camera, I'd really like to get my hands on the pictures you took. Flickr, Email, and snail mail are all good options. Kristen and I would really appreciate it.

Anyway, enjoy the pics.

[Kylan's Blog] The Bird and the Bee Sides

I just bought Relient K's new album, The Bird and the Bee Sides. I was warned that this album is only for die-hard fans, but I'm really enjoying it so far. It's a compilation of previously unreleased and/or unfamiliar tunes that really shows off the diverse abilities of the band. Besides, $10 for 26 songs is never a bad deal.

[Kylan's Blog] Wedding Pictures Are In

Yesterday in the mail, we received three CDs of wedding pictures from our photographer. There were 577 shots in all!

Now we're beginning the long process of reviewing, editing, and sorting. The plan is to upload all of the original and edited versions to Flickr, so everyone can look at them and (optionally) print copies for themselves.

I will also categorize the photos by theme and create a Flickr set for each theme. These sets will contain the better-looking pictures, and will be featured on KylanAndKristen.com.

In addition to the Flickr uploads and our personal website, I will be working on a slideshow for our reception in Tacoma. Kristen is creating a picture book on Shutterfly.com, and will also be printing some of the pictures to put in frames around our house.

If you took any good pictures at our wedding, please send them our way. We would really appreciate it!

[Kylan's Blog] SEL Wedding Gift

Apparently, the company I work for gives a gift and a card to its employees that get married. What a nice gesture! It certainly reminds me that I am part of a great community.

[Kylan's Blog] Switchfoot Webcam

Live webcam video of Switchfoot in the studio working on their new album:

[DupySite] Content Management Experiments

Over the past few days, I've been working on a new website for my KylanAndKristen.com domain. Since the wedding is finished, a redesign is due. The wedding website will be preserved under www.dupyshon.com/wedding, so you can still visit and sign the digital guestbook, if you like.

Anyway, I wanted to try something new with this site. In the past, I've coded up all of the HTML and CSS on my own. It's been a fun learning experience, but it also takes a lot of work. Additionally, since I'm not a graphic design guru, the sites end up looking less polished than I would like. This time around I decided to try my hand at implementing a content management system that can handle all of the backend details. I tried out three different options:

TextPattern

At first I was sure that TextPattern would be the right tool for me. My friend Mike Sun runs a photoblog called Sojourning Days using this software, and it looks really classy. TextPattern is extremely simple, almost to the extent of being bare-bones, but that let me feel like I had a lot of control. There were some issues regarding navigation between pages and auto-generated content, though, so I decided to move on.

Joomla

Joomla had the advantage of working right out of the box. However, it seems like this product is meant for a much larger-scale implementation. The support for many users, polls, and other features were just overkill for what I wanted. Plus, most of the extensions and themes are non-free, making customization much more difficult than I would have liked.

Wordpress

I've been wanting to try Wordpress for quite a while. I really like the way users can create blog posts as well as web pages. There is quite a large community supporting this product, which means that there are plenty of free extensions, widgets, and themes. Out of these three, Wordpress is easily the best choice for KylanAndKristen.com.

KylanAndKristen.com is now up and running, with pictures from our wedding to be posted later this week. Stay tuned, because the site should grow pretty quickly over the next couple of months.

[Kylan's Blog] Airplanes Running on Empty

This is an amazing article: "Airlines are running out of gas. Literally," by Tekla Perry. Apparently, airlines are trying to minimize the amount of fuel on board in order to lighten their load. Outrageous! This practice will become increasingly annoying to air travelers if it continues, and could be very dangerous, as well.

[Kylan's Blog] Wedding Day

I know this is nearly two weeks late, but Kristen and I were married on June 14th in a beautiful ceremony.  We are now getting adjusted to married life and are loving every minute of it.  Check back soon for pictures and more details!

[Kylan's Blog] Photo Albums

Using our new camera, I've been taking quite a few pictures lately. You can check out the good ones via DupyPics. The recent albums are also listed below.

Pre-Wedding
Jeff's Baseball Game
Jim's Birthday
St. Louis
Wedding
(Pictures to come, be patient)
Honeymoon
Ana Maria Island
Key West
Sanibel Island
The Everglades

[Kylan's Blog] Summer EP Release

Jon Foreman's Summer EP was released today, which was unexpected. I haven't had a chance to listen to the tracks yet, but I'll post a review sometime in the near future. Buy your copy of the tunes here. Also be sure to check out JonForeman.com.

[Kylan's Blog] New Camera

In anticipation for all of the photo opportunities that a wedding and a honeymoon are bound to present, Kristen and I purchased a new camera. It's a Sony DSC-H50, featuring 9.1 megapixels and 15x optical zoom. It was hard to decide between the Sony and a comparable Canon model, especially since I enjoyed my old Canon so much, but the Sony had a few features that made it seem like a better camera.

In particular, I really liked the sports modes available on the DSC-H50. The shutter speed is excellent, and the minimum time between pictures is a lot smaller than any DSLR-like camera that Canon has on the market. There is a "shoot continuously" option that allows you to take consecutive pictures only 1/3 second apart from each other.

Another cool feature is the SmileShutter capability. In this mode, the user presses and releases the shutter button, but the camera only takes a picture once it detects that the subject in the frame is smiling. This could be really nice when photographing camera-shy children. So far, it seems to work really well.

We bought this camera at Circuit City, and we were extremely pleased with the customer service we received. Earlier in the day, we tried going to a shop called "Camera Corner" because we thought that the staff there would be more knowledgeable about cameras. Instead, they turned out to be snobs and were completely rude to us. When asked to compare two different models, the attendant simply shrugged her shoulders. "Apple and oranges," she said. She refused to give us any help on how to pick out a camera. We would have been more than happy to give her our money if only she had been nicer. There's another company to add to my Customer Service Blacklist.

[Kylan's Blog] Wedding Prep

So, a lot has happened in the past couple of weeks. With the wedding only a week away, we have a lot of plans to finalize. Here's a quick recap of what's been going on.

The drive from Pullman, WA to Normal, IL was pretty uneventful. Except for the fact that we broke down in South Dakota. Sound familiar? It should, because that's what happened two years ago, the last time that Kristen and I made this drive. In fact, we broke down only about seventy miles away from our previous spot. Since Kristen had an important fitting for her wedding dress the next day, her grandpa drove six hours to trade cars with us so we could get back on the road. That was so nice of him!

After arriving in Normal, Kristen went to her dress fitting and then we drove down to Quincy to visit her other grandparents (the wedding is going to be at their house). We spent two days in Quincy talking to the caterer, the party supply store, the hair dresser, etc. We got a lot done during this time, which helped alleviate a lot of the pressure associated with the wedding plans.

Since getting back to Normal, Kristen and I have continued to work on some of the finer details. I bought some groomsman gifts, Kristen designed the ceremony program, etc. We have an action item list that separates our tasks by day. So far it's worked out really well. All we have to do today is make signs for the road and the mail box to direct the wedding guests to the right house. (Since today is relatively free, I have time to write this blog post.)

Our wedding is only a week away! I'm starting to get very excited.

[Kylan's Blog] New Phone Number

I have a new phone number, 509-432-1069.

[Kylan's Blog] Sprint Cell Phones Considered Harmful

If you're shopping around for new cell phone service plans, DO NOT go with Sprint. Kristen and I bought a new plan from them last weekend, and it has been nothing but trouble for us so far. The store representative signed us up for a number of features that we explicitly declined, and the customer service has been horrible. I've spent hours and hours talking to rude, unmotivated, impatient, defiant Sprint employees, trying to repair the damage done by their underhanded and unethical store representative.

After getting nowhere, I decided to talk to someone in the Pullman Sprint store to see what could be done. She suggested calling customer service again, asking for the "Retention" department and threatening to cancel my contract. Since Sprint offers a 30-day money back guarantee, this is good leverage. I followed her advice, and the representative I was connected to was actually quite helpful. Apparently, Sprint really wants to hold on to their new customers. I was able to resolve our issue, and our plan finally looks like what we agreed to originally.

Still, I am completely disappointed with my Sprint experience. I will never recommend Sprint to any of my friends or family. In fact, I will encourage them to go with any service that is NOT Sprint. I despise companies that treat their customers like dirt. In a business of this nature, customer satisfaction should be of paramount importance.

[Kylan's Blog] Cougar Baseball

Today Kristen and I went to the last Cougar baseball game of the year, against USC at Bailey-Brayton field. The game started at noon, leaving us just enough time for us to get done with church and grab some lunch. The game was actually pretty good, even though the Cougs were down 8-1 for most of it.  In the ninth inning, they scored six straight runs to pull within one point of the Trojans.  USC was able to hang on, leaving two of our guys on base by the time they retired the side. The weather was great, with an enjoyable combination of the warm sun and a soft breeze.

[Jaron's Blog] Recent News

I have recently been working at the Criminal Justice Training Commission in Burien as my internship this summer.  It's been pretty interesting so far.  I've been able to archive registration files for the classes that the law enforcement officers take and a few other office-type tasks such as copying.  Some of the employees are pretty happy about all the time-consuming work I'm doing for them.  I enjoy doing it though, it isn't too much of a drag.

One thing that I have been able to do while interning is to listen to National Public Radio almost non-stop.  I've found it very fascinating, and it's really amazed me how much information I can absorb while doing mindless bean-counting tasks.  I always like listening to the names of all the NPR people, because some of them are really interesting.  There's a full list of all the correspondents and hosts at www.npr.org if you want to check them out.

Mom, Dad and I recently went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  It was pretty good, I would recommend to see it.  I think it's obvious that there going to do more Indiana Jones movies after this one.  Overall though, I think it only really worked because it's going to be an introduction movie to another series of Indiana Jones movies.  It was sort of a novelty rather than incredibly engaging in its own right.  Still, it is one that ought to be watched.

Other than that, our family is just gearing up for the wedding in a few weeks in Illinois, so there's not much time left.  I'll figure out something to give to Kylan and Kristen for their wedding...

[Jaron's Blog]- "Relief Provided to Blog Drought Victims"

Kylan has made it known that there need to be more blog posts.  To the rescue:

The earthquake in China has caught a lot of news and media attention so far.  About two years ago when I visited China, I went to the region that has been hit, Szechuan Province.  I've found myself wondering about the students that we were paired with and the sister school we visited.  I really do hope they are all right.  Since I got back home I've been listening to NPR a lot, and it was a little serendipitous that the NPR team was already over there ready to report the latest news.  Along with the cyclone in Myanmar, things have been a little dodgy in the that area of the world.

I am actually back home now, and I am working basically as an office slave for my aunt up at the Criminal Justice Training Center in Burien.  It turns out that where I am basically interning is only a few blocks from Peter Klosterman's (a friend from WSU) home.  I might be doing some pretty interesting work up there this summer, so I'll keep you all posted.

[Kylan's Blog] Posting Drought

There have been plenty of blog-worthy things to write about lately, but I haven't had a chance to sit down and actually post them.  I'll try to get back on top of things this week.

[Kylan's Blog] Switchfoot "This is Home" Video

Switchfoot's new song, the featured track for the upcoming Chronicles of Narnia movie.

[Kylan's Blog] Building Blocks Auction

Last night Building Blocks (where Kristen works) had a dinner and silent auction. Kristen and I went, and it was pretty fun. We ended up bidding on and winning a Cougar-themed grill set and a party platter from Quizno's. Both of those will come in handy for our wedding reception in Pullman this summer.

[Kylan's Blog] End-of-Semester Roundup

These are the tasks I have to complete before the end of the semester:

CptS 562 - Fault Tolerant Computing

• Pseudo-Clusters of Faults
• "Bit Packing"
• Graceful Performance Degradation (GPD)
• Non-Square Modules (adders and subtracters)
• Rotation of Non-Square Modules on Placement Failures
• Test Setup
• Test Execution
• Result Analysis
• Writeup
• References
• Demo
• Submission
  

EE 451 - Digital Communication Systems

• Concepts
• Implementation
• Debugging
• Analysis
• Writeup
• Study Homeworks
• Study Notes
• Study Past Exams
• Study Text Book
• Final Exam

TA EE 415 - Senior Design

• Grade Lab Books
• Call Scott for Grading Guidelines
  
• Grade Final Reports
  

[HiPerCoPS] FFT

To test the reconfiguration mechanism of my simulator, I'll use a 32x32 cell device and implement an FFT circuit. These are the modules that comprise the FFT:

• 4x4-cell multipliers (12)
• 2x4-cell adders (11)
• 2x4-cell subtractors (11)
• 4x4-cell memories (8)

The experimental variable will be the number of faults, starting at zero and increasing by one until the system can not longer be mapped to the device. The dependent variable will be the percentage of time that the system is unable to be mapped to the device (the "failure rate").

The tests will be performed on a number of versions of my simulator:

1. No fault avoidance. The placer simply maps modules without knowing/caring if a cell is faulty or not.
2. Simple fault avoidance. Modules are mapped in the order that they were added to the device, avoiding faults.
3. Size-aware fault avoidance. Modules are mapped starting with the largest and ending with the smallest, avoiding faults.
4. GPD fault avoidance. Simple fault avoidance, but faulty cells can be used if the desired functionality is still present.
5. GPD size-aware fault avoidance. Size-aware fault avoidance, but faulty cells can be used if the desired functionality is still present.
   

Of course, it will be important to automate this test. Some simple loops should do it though. I'll run a few tests by hand to decide how long each trial takes. Based on that information (and how much time I have at my disposal), I'll decide how many trials to run for a given number of faults. Somewhere between 10^3 and 10^4 trials for a given number of faults per simulation version should suffice, I would think.

Before I move on to the experiment, though, I need to investigate the phenomenon of "pseudo-clustering." Dr. Delgado told me that modern fault models tend to group faults in bunches rather than disperse them equally across a system. Apparently, this model is a closer approximation to the real world. One thing to consider, though, is whether pseudo-clustering is likely to occur in our architecture.

[HiPerCoPS] 562 Project

For most of this semester, I've been working on a simulator for our architecture. I developed an algorithm to determine the cell types in multiplier modules of arbitrary size and granularity. Then I worked on simulating the cell interconnects so the multipliers would actually function. There are still a few bugs in the overall system, but it works pretty well for the most part.

Now, as part of my Cpt S 562: Fault Tolerant Computing class, I'm working on a mechanism that maps these multipliers to reconfigurable device. The algorithms are pretty simple so far, but they're also a bit clunky. I'm looking into ways to make the process more elegant and efficient, but the real focus is on making it fault tolerant. My goal is to add fault recovery and avoidance capabilities to the device.

So far, I can define a device with certain dimensions and place modules on it. There's also a function that induces permanent faults in the cells. Fault placement is random, but the number of faults to be induced is taken as a parameter.  My module placer knows that it can't map modules over faulty cells, so it looks for fault-free areas that are big enough for the "footprint" of a module.

Sometimes, if there are too many faults or the modules are too large, placement will be impossible. My system is smart enough to realize this report an error whenever it happens. There are a number ways to maximize the likelihood of being able to place 100% of the modules for a given system. First of all, the module placer can attempt to map the modules in order of size, from biggest to smallest. This way, the modules that are least likely to have enough space (the largest modules) have a better chance of finding unused real estate on the device. The smaller modules, then, can "settle into the cracks" that remain. Second, it is possible that fault cells can still be used in some contexts. Since the atomic unit of our architecture is medium grain, perhaps a single burnt-out transistor won't cause the entire cell to fail. In the event that a subset of the functionality remains, maybe certain types of cells could still be mapped to this location. This is an example of graceful performance degradation, which could greatly increase the lifetime of the device.

One of the things I'd like to do is consider using a simulated annealing algorithm in the module placer. This approach is used in most FPGA placers. Although there are some fundamental differences between FPGAs and our architecture, I still think that simulated annealing could be a promising option for more efficient module placement.

[Kylan's Blog] Seussical the Musical

Last Saturday, Kristen and I saw Seussical the Musical at the Regional Theater of the Palouse (RTOP) in Pullman. One of Kristen's coworkers played the Cat in the Hat. It was a great show that was well directed, and the actors did a wonderful job.

I really liked the small, intimate atmosphere of the theater. It only seats about 85 people, and the front of the stage is literally inches from the first row of the audience. Since the theater is so small, though, a live orchestra is not possible. That's the only thing I would change, since a real band is always more fun.

RTOP will be presenting Fiddler on the Roof this September, and I'm definitely planning on getting tickets to that.

[Kylan's Blog] Carl Spackler

Bill Murray played a character named Carl Spackler in the 1980 movie Caddy Shack. One of my favorite movie characters of all time.

[HiPerCoPS] Google "in binary" Searches

During my research, I've come to rely heavily on the Google Calculator. Since I usually have a web browser, this is the easiest way for me to do conversions involving decimal, binary, and hexadecimal numbers. Here are some examples:

 

"256 in binary" gives

256 = 0b100000000

 

"255 in hexadecimal" gives 

255 = 0xF

"0b00101011101010101010101101010100101 in decimal" gives

0b00101011101010101010101101010100101 = 5 860 842 149

Very useful. Thanks, Google!

[DupySite] The Wii Page

I've made a new addition to Dupyshon.com, and I'm calling it The Wii Page. This is where I'll record all of my Wii-related information. You can expect to see game reviews, etc. in the future, even though the page is pretty bare right now.

[Kylan's Blog] American Idol Predictions

1. David Cook
2. David Archuleta
3. Carly Smithson
4. Brooke White
5. Syesha Mercado
   
6. Jason Castro

[Kylan's Blog] Dr. William E. Johns

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a really interesting lecture by Dr. William E. Johns from the materials engineering department at WSU. He spoke about his experience in academics and in industry, and offered good anecdotal advice on how to be an engineer. To conclude his lecture, Dr. Johns presented his Rules of Life, which I've reproduced below:

1. If you get into a fight with a skunk, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, you lose. Pick your battles very carefully, CYA with paper. (Never write anything negative in a memo!)

2. Never test the depth of the water with both feet. Do your homework. Always leave yourself an out. An out can be an alternative project, a transfer guaranteed in hand--in writing, a large savings account, a winning lotto ticket, etc., anything to fall back on when the water turns out to be really deep, and ugly and swirling.

3. When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. Know when to hold them, and know when to fold. It's OK and indeed wise, to back out of a bad project or endless argument in a timely manner. 

4. When the boss asks for "vigorous, open, candid discussion" on a particular topic, the boss is lying. That statement is a classic red flag. If your supervisor is worthy of the position, statements such as the one above need not be said, it should be the working policy of the group. If a weak or domineering boss says that, that person is only looking for agreement. SHUT UP. DON'T ARGUE. Trust me on this one. 

5. Good enough is good enough. As engineers, you will never get it perfect as "perfection" is not an achievable goal. There are many correct solutions to every engineering problem. Within the constraints of time, budget, other resources, you can fill a need and complete a task. At that point the job is done. Stop working on it. 

6. When you are in up to your ears, keep your mouth shut. More damage has been done by trying to argue and defend a position than probably any other factor. It doesn't matter that you were right or wrong, when the discussion morphs into an argument, logic is irrelevant. At that point it is not what you say, but your saying anything that might very well be held against you. (NMAOTKYMS) [Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut]

7. Good--Fast--Cheap. Pick two. If it is good and fast, it won't be cheap. If it is cheap and good, it won't be fast. If it is fast and cheap, it won't be good. This has been an engineering maxim since year 1. The original space program was good and fast. It was not cheap. In the past bunch of years, the official publicly stated policy for NASA was Good-Fast-Cheap. We've lost two shuttles, 2 Mars probes, and had a major problem with deep space and outer planet probes and had to do a major repair on Hubble. Enough said. 

8. Responsibility without authority is fatal. Never accept responsibility for a project unless you have the parallel authority to influence the outcome. Alternately, when given a project make sure of exactly what authority you have and then make sure that your responsibility matches the authority. Make sure that everyone up and down the line knows who is responsible for what. CYA with paper.  

9. You cannot inspect quality into a product. Design and materials selection is the basis for a quality. Inspection simply insures that you've met design specs. A perfectly manufactured and assembled Yugo is still a Yugo, not a Porsche. This goes for all aspects of life. 

10. Career--Family--Major Hobbies: Pick two. Try as you may, you will not have time for all three. Heavy decisions. To attempt all three is to assure failure. 

11. Be patient. It may take thirty years, but sooner or later they'll listen to you, and in the meantime, keep kicking ass. -- Florynce R. Kennedy

[Kylan's Blog] Job Accepted

Today I formally accepted the position at SEL and signed all of the papers. My official start date is May 1.

[Kylan's Blog] President's Award

I found out today that I was selected as a winner of the 2008 WSU President's Award. There will be a dinner and reception on April 27 at 5:30PM in the Rec Center.

[Kylan's Blog] Birthday Weekend

This weekend I went home with Kristen and Jaron. We all took Friday off and left Pullman on Thursday night. This was a good weekend to go to Tacoma because my birthday was on Friday and ERC wanted to throw us a wedding shower.

The ride home was uneventful. The pass was clear, and the road crews had finished their avalanche repairs by the time we got there.

On Friday morning Kristen convinced me to open my presents in the morning. It was a good idea, because she surprised me with a Wii. I've been wanting one for quite some time, but didn't expect to get it as a gift. Needless to say, the rest of the morning and afternoon were spent swinging our arms about while staring at the television. Wii Sports came with the console, and Wii Play was bundled with the extra controller that was part of my present. Jaron and Christine pitched in to buy me Guitar Hero III for the Wii, and it should arrive in Pullman within a day or two. My parents gave me a box full of camping supplies, which will come in very handy this summer. The box included a table cloth covered with Cougar heads, a guidebook to Washington state parks, a cast iron skillet, a lamp that turns a Nalgene into a lantern, and more. I can't wait to try these things out with the rest of my gear.

For Saturday, Kristen and I went up to Kent to see Victoria and Karl. We had breakfast together, and it was enjoyable to catch up with them. The weather was amazing (in the high 70's), so we decided to go mini golfing after the meal. Then it was off to the mall, since Kristen had a gift card she needed to use. She was able to get some great clothes at pretty good deals. After eating dinner with my family, Kristen and I drove to Puyallup to hang out with Jake. With him, we went to The Rock (since he hadn't eaten dinner yet) and then back to his apartment. I brought along the Wii and we played a couple of the games together. Jake also pulled out a copy of the Lewis and Clark video we made in high school. It was really fun to reminisce about that project, especially since I haven't thought about it in a while.

On Sunday we all went to church. Afterward was the shower, which was attended by 60 or 70 people. It included a taco salad lunch, a couple of games, and words of wisdom from married couples. It was really nice of the church to put this on for us. Kristen and I appreciated it a lot. After that, Kristen, Jaron, and I drove back to Pullman, arriving there around 8PM.

[Jaron's Blog] BuzzDash

Recently I installed the StumbleUpon addition to Firefox.  Just now it led me to a site called "BuzzDash."  Now, for those who are not political science majors or statistics majors, this may not be exciting, but I think it is great.  This site contains a plethora of surveys for almost any subject.  This is not just some add-on for Facebook or another social networking site; it is an entire website fully devoted to surveys and statistics put together by users.  This could be a useful source of information for general popular trends and similar veins of information...  Check out BuzzDash.

[Kylan's Blog] Noisy Cars are Better?

Apparently, the US House of Representatives may soon consider a law setting minimum noise emission requirements for new automobiles. In my opinion, this would be a horrible idea. Sure, being able to hear a car might prevent a small number of pedestrian-automobile accidents from happening. But there has to be a better way. First of all, it's the driver's responsibility to watch for pedestrians. If they run into someone on the street, it's their fault. Pedestrians have the right-of-way. Second, our world has too much noise pollution as it is. Silencing modern cars would be a good thing, not a danger. Installing speakers in new cars just sounds ridiculous. This type of law would simply perpetuate a flaw (noisy engines) that can be solved by modern engineering.

[DupySite] Become a Contributor

This is a golden opportunity! Now you can apply to become a Dupyshon.com contributor. Contributors control the content and message of the website, and they act as ambassadors between the site and the rest of the world. Contributors also have a huge amount of say concerning the evolution (or, maybe, feature creep) of the website. The process of becoming a contributor is largely undefined at this time, but this is by design. We wanted to give applicants as much freedom as possible to prove their merits. All you have to do is email applications@dupyshon.com with an application packet.

Q: What is an application packet?
A:

Anything (and everything) you want it to be. Your application packet can take any number of forms. It can be a traditional email, a link to a YouTube video, an attached PDF, or anything else. Creativity is the key here, and it can get you major bonus points.

Q: What kinds of things will the evaluators be looking for?
A:

The overall qualification we need to see is that you would be a good fit in the Dupyshon.com community. This means that we need to get a good impression of your personality and disposition, and you have to prove that you will be able to add to the spirit of Dupyshon.com. Please address your concept of what Dupyshon.com is, and where you see it headed in the future. Also, if you became a contributor, what would you bring to the table? Examples of past work could help a lot. How would you help Dupyshon.com realize its greatest potential?

This is one question that you must answer in order to get the job: What does "dupyshon" mean to you?

Q: When is the deadline for application submission?
A:

For now, there is no deadline. We will welcome applications for the foreseeable future.

Q: How many positions are available?
A:

This is undetermined, although we will probably accept up to 2 or 3 new contributors.

Q: What does the position pay?
A:

If you're in it for the money, this job's not for you. Annual salary: $0. Hey, we do this for the love of everything Dupy. That should be enough for you, too.

[Kylan's Blog] New Job

Today I accepted an Associate Software Engineer position at SEL. I'll be working for Doug Arlt in research and development, writing code for new products.

[DupySite] New Feature Ideas

Here are two ideas for new features for Dupyshon.com that I've been thinking about:

• Status Updates

Lately I've become intrigued by the concept of microblogging. Often, I feel like I have something worthy of posting on Dupyshon.com, but it's not enough to merit a full post in the DupyBlog. I simply don't have that much to say. Examples might include "My test went well this morning," or "Matlab is not a real programming language." I can also use it to emulate the Facebook status feature. There are a number of microblogging applications out there, but I think I like Twitter the best. If I can do a little hacking on their API, I might be able to integrate it into my website. Then I can replace my GTalk status badge on the Contributors page, and maybe even move it to the homepage.

• Bookmarks

Right now DupyLinks is powered by Blogger. It does its job, but it's a little clunky. In the near future, I might be changing it over to del.icio.us. There are a few reasons that del.icio.us does a better job than what I have now. First of all, it allows for easy posting. All I need is a bookmarklet on my Firefox toolbar. Second, it lets me include comments with links. I can do this with my Blogger setup, but that takes more work. Finally, links are taggable.

Dupyshon.com - always evolving and/or improving and/or giving in to feature creep!

[DupySite] Bookmarks

I've added del.icio.us bookmarks to the Contributors page. I chose this service over all the others for two reasons. First, it allows me to include comments on the bookmarks. Second, it provided me with an easy way to publish my bookmarks to Dupyshon.com. Of course, if I'm always open to a better alternative.

[Kylan's Blog] DIVA Presentation

In a few minutes, I'll be giving a paper presentation in my fault tolerant computing class. It's on "DIVA: a reliable substrate for deep submicron microarchitecture design." (original paper) (my slides)

By the way, I've started saving my presentations as PDF files lately. I find them to be much more portable than PowerPoint files. Of course, this probably isn't an option if you like fancy swooping text and bells and whistles exploding everywhere.

[Kylan's Blog] NSF GRFP Results

During the fall semester this year, I applied for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) award. I just got the results back yesterday. I wasn't one of the award recipients, but all of the participants were given a copy of the judges' comments (1) (2). This feedback is helpful, although it's interesting that these two responses actually contradict each other on a number of points. For example, one judge said that my "societal involvement explanation is weak" while the other commends me for "a specific plan for involving undergraduates in [my] research problem."

[Kylan's Blog] Switchfoot Bootlegs

I just discovered an excellent site called SwitchfootBootlegs.com. With permission from the band itself, this website hosts bootleg recordings of live performances by Switchfoot. The home page is nothing special, but I've subscribed to their podcast, which as A LOT of content. Right now I'm listening to a few tunes from the Switchfoot concert I attended in February of 2007. It's worth noting that this site can be very slow at times, and their server was down all of yesterday.

[Kylan's Blog] CptS 562 Final Project Proposal

I just completed my half-page final project proposal for my fault tolerant computing class (CptS 562). You can view it if you want.

[Kylan's Blog] TraCS Logo

I've created a new logo for the transmitter control simulator (TraCS) program I'm working on:

[Kylan's Blog] The Cougars and God -- faith in basketball

This article from the Spokesman Review talks about God's role in this year's Cougar Men's Basketball team. With this in mind, it's easy to see where the team gets its composure, maturity, and humility.

If you enjoyed this, I also suggest that you check out Why We Play, an article by Peter Leithart, a pastor in Moscow, Idaho.

[Kylan's Blog] Snow!?

Pullman is getting dumped on. This is a lot of snow, especially considering the fact that we're half way through the last week in March.

[Kylan's Blog] Weston Visit

Weston's back on the Palouse this week with a spring break missions team from Western. He's leading the group, which will be doing contact evangelism at U of I. They're pretty busy, though, so my only chance to see him was last night at Chi Alpha. It was good to see him, although we didn't have much of a chance to talk about anything in depth.

[Kylan's Blog] Spring EP Released

You can now download Jon Foreman's new Spring EP. I suggest getting it here, because it's cheaper. I listening to the first track right now, and it's very springy. A full review is coming, so stay tuned.

[Kylan's Blog] Tourney Update

After two rounds, my bracket has 42 points on Facebook and 46 on Google. I've had a lot of problems with the Midwest and the West, and that will continue to hurt for the rest of the tournament. The South didn't do very well for me in the first round, but everything got corrected in the second round. Finally, I'm 100% in the East. Let's hope that streak continues, especially since I have WSU beating UNC to get to the Elite Eight!

[The Ministry of Culture] The Complete History of Valiant Isle, Chapter 3, Part 2

On the Fifth Day of Dengar, the Fifth Month, of 964 B.C. Lathos I was crowned before all of Xenoz and a fleet of ships in Royal Harbor. The Regal Dynasty of Lathos was initiated, known as regal because of its beginnings in the regent's decision.

Most of Lathos I's work was directed toward reinstating the validity of the Kingship and its power. In the 41 years of his reign, Lathos disciplined the troublesome and divided Mesaica into efficiency and proper counsel and representation. He toured the whole of Valiant Isle and its outlying domain, excluding Galbrethi, but paying special favor to the Nine Silver Islands and the new province they had turned into, Ixisanda, or the "Land of Silver." These islands were the main producers of metals and raw materials in the Konai Realm, and Lathos I made sure that the Konai mining industry prospered during his time in the throne.

As part of the Age of Power, Lathos I held a certain amount of respect because of the might of his kingly will. He was not a hard man, but expected that the things he decreed would be followed. Under Lathos I, the military no longer fulfilled the police powers that they had been expected to deal with before, but an entirely new civil police force was developed as a semi-militarized order. It greatly increased the order and greatly reduced crime without the excess effect of repression in the masses.

When Lathos I died in 923 B.C., his son, Garandor the Good succeeded him to the throne. About this time, rumors of the illegitimacy of the Lathos line began to spread and the Begai attempted to re-corrupt the Mesaica, but most of the new royal counselors were true to the crown. In reality, Bedencor, the son of Begas III, had begun a traitorous campaign to overthrow the king. But Garandor the Good, so named for his legendary high morals (he reputedly would not lie to anyone, even his enemies), had secured his throne through honesty and integrity and by that method was unshakable by the surrounding nobles.

Bedencor then took the Begai and left the Mesaica in rebellion, burning helpless towns on the way back to Galbrethi, creating the infamous "Road of Fire." Garandor, upon hearing the news, decided to do what many of his forefathers had avoided; the king declared open war upon the Begai and all their allies. In light of this, Garandor increased the power of the military and created the Royal Archers, an elite unit of soldiers that were created to protect the kingship and defeat the hordes of Galbrethi.

Thus in 910 B.C., Garandor arrayed his forces in the southwest of Valiant to bar any attack from Galbrethi, and launched assault upon the rocky fortress year after year for nearly 20 years. With a naval blockade surrounding the rock fortress as well, Galbrethi was under a massive siege. Bedencor had been prepared for this even though, and had been able to hold out for the two decades. In 880 B.C., Bedencor launched a counter assault upon Hathanda with a secret force that had been built up over the years.

With Bedencor leading this surprise attack, his army took the small farming town Theron, in the center of the island, the central source of grain to Xenoz. Garandor marshaled an attack force of Royal Archers to take the town, but not before leaving his young baby son, Lathos II, to a maiden upon the edge of Xenoz, saying, "If my crown shall fail in this task, my son's crown will continue. If this city is taken, make haste to the palace of Xenoz-Ramba and present him to the Keeper of that place. He shall know what to do."

Garandor and the Archers came with force unto Theron and besieged Bedencor and his Black Soldiers into one of the storehouses of grain at the place. But Bedencor, in deceit, left the storehouse and made for the Great Mill of that town.

Garandor drew his sword and pursued the Dark Master to that Mill. Unbeknown to Garandor, a second force had been hidden within that place. When Garandor entered, he was shot by ten arrows into the chest and stabbed by Bedencor's curved blade in his back. Bedencor then spoke to the King with a crafty voice, saying, "And so you die and I shall succeed the Honest One, so honest that he could not see my deceit. And with this host of weapons I shall scar the very last seconds of your pure life."

But Garandor, still conscious, but in great pain replied, "And with a single weapon, I shall scar the rest of the pitiful years in your life." Then Garandor took his drawn sword and stabbed Bedencor in the leg, brought the blade back to him and then cut the rope line holding the upper millstone in its place bringing the grand rock down upon Bedencor's hand, which he had been using to support himself as he nursed his leg. Garandor then brought up his sword for a deathblow, but was shot down. He fell dead.

The Royal Archers had found the dark army too powerful for their skill and fled south to hide in the farmlands of Jaksanda. Later the Archers would move their base to the Cavern Cathedral to join with the Blue Order.

Thus crippled in his leg and hand, Bedencor nevertheless rode into Xenoz with an ill spirit and set upon the throne. Several Mesaica members were killed because of their loyalty to the true crown, while others submitted to Bedencor in fear for their lives. Under these conditions Bedencor I crowned himself as the Dark King over Valiant and proceeded to subjugate the people to the dictatorial rule of his crushed hand, using his Black Army as shock police. For sixteen years the ruler allowed the fearful Mesaica to organize the government while he luxuriated in his stolen palace.

Meanwhile, the loyalist forces of the Royal Archers and the Blue Order organized in the Cavern Cathedral under the leadership of Thedro, Keeper of Xenoz-Ramba who was also acting as the Regent to young Lathos II. When Lathos II was seventeen, he led the Loyalist Alliance to surprise attack Xenoz ending in victory. Lathos II nearly killed Bedencor I, but stayed his hand in mercy toward the wicked king. But Bedencor I, when limping alone from the recaptured capital, he was stabbed in the back by an old woman, the same woman who had taken Lathos II when he was young. With his last breath, Bedencor I pronounced a curse on Lathos II's children, to die a mysterious and senseless death. Then Bedencor's son, Begas IV took his body to the Pyramid Shrine of Galbrethi and drank his ashes spread in wine, a superstitious practice of most of the Begai Lords.

Lathos II reigned for 27 more years in a relatively peaceful time. He established the Ninety-Three Watchtowers that guarded the island for a long time afterwards, in light of the Galbrethi threat that always lurked around the corner. The Konai and the Begai were still technically at war, and would be for nearly eight hundred more years. Lathos II died in 842 B.C. and his son Lathos III took the throne at age twenty.

Lathos III was typically unimportant because of the lack of important events that happened in his period of reign. Everything in the Konai Civilization had been stabilized, including the growth of the now healthy military. Lathos III had little initiative for civil projects due mostly to his bad health. He did not marry due partly to this deficiency and that was the reason for the end of the Lathos line. Lathos did finally exile Begas IV who had been harassing the Mesaica periodically for retribution for his father's death. One evening in 812 B.C., Lathos III had been walking upon the Ro Peninsula, when a lighting storm struck and a bolt of lighting hit him. He died upon that day, and with him, the Regal Lathos Dynasty and the Age of Power.

[Kylan's Blog] Palouse Discovery Science Center

Sometime last fall, EECS decided that Project Fuji's work would be good material for a display at the Palouse Discovery Science Center. A few weeks ago, Dr. Pedrow emailed me with some questions regarding the project. I told him what I knew, and offered to help in any way I could. Today we visited the science center with Dr. Mohamed Osman and Patricia Arnold. We spoke with the executive director, Victoria Scalise, and discussed the possibility of an EECS-sponsored exhibit. It was very helpful to get a tour of the science center and get a feel for what kinds of exhibits were there. Maybe I'll come up with some conceptual drawings for the new display this weekend.

[HiPerCoPS] A New Direction

I'm nearly finished with my two's complement multiplier. For a long time, I couldn't figure out why multiplication of negative numbers didn't work. On Tuesday, though, I sat down and fleshed it out by walking through the algorithm step-by-step. This means that I'm almost ready to move on to some new things. I need to implement an unsigned multiplier, and I might even take a shot at the hierarchical multiplier. Once those are all finished, the multiplier corner of this research will be pretty much exhausted. Dr. Delgado has suggested that I might be able to write a paper on what I've done so far, but we need to find a journal that is appropriate for this topic.

With the multiplier business coming to an end, it's time to start moving in a new direction. In my fault tolerance class we're required to do a term project, so I'd like to kill two birds with one stone by working on adding some kind of fault tolerance to the Washington architecture. I'm not really sure what shape this project will take yet, but I'll figure it out over the next few days.

[Kylan's Blog] Literature Survey

Over spring break and the past week, I've been working on a literature survey for my fault tolerance class. Well, it's finally done!  Here it is, in case you want to read it. Now I can get on with the rest of my life.

[Kylan's Blog] Georgia on My Mind

Dang, my Cinderella team didn't even make it past the first round. Oh, Georgia, your were doing so well! Now my bracket is already ruined.

[Kylan's Blog] My Bracket

Here's my bracket for the 2008 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Go Cougs!

[Kylan's Blog] Silo Sandwiches

This week WSU reopened the Rotunda dining center, with new food options, modern architecture, and a new name - The Southside Cafe. Before leaving for spring break, I saw an advertisement for new features being offered at Southside. It championed these things called "silo sandwiches," which seemed strangely familiar to me.

Before going on, I have to tell you about The Staggering Ox, a Spokane restaurant Kristen and I ate at last semester. I really liked the novel idea of "bread tubes" that hold sandwich fillings. In fact, I liked it so much that I asked the employees about how they make them. They informed me that their company holds a patent on the bread pan and corer tool design, so their franchise is the only company that can produce these sandwiches.

From what I can tell, silo sandwiches are same thing as what's sold at the Staggering Ox. Considering the Staggering Ox patents, how can Southside legally make and sell these sandwiches? If they haven't made the necessary arrangements, WSU could be sued and lose a lot of money. If I were the Staggering Ox, I would license out the pan and corer for a cut of the dining center profits. If they could get 5 or 10 cents per sandwich, it would be a great deal.

I wish there was an easier way to find out more about this whole situation. Maybe the Daily Evergreen could run a story on it.

[Kylan's Blog] Spring EP Release: March 25th

Jon Foreman's Spring EP, the third of four he's releasing this year, will be available for download on March 25th. You'll be able to purchase it from the Amazon.com music store, or from JonForeman.com. The preview clips are very promising, and I anticipate that the last three songs will be the best.

[Kylan's Blog] Basketball Signage

I know this is belated, but I'm still very happy that the Cougars beat the Huskies last Saturday. It was the perfect way for our beloved seniors to go out. I think they stretched the game to two overtimes just to prolong their departure. I just wanted to note that our student section was displaying some great signage at the game. I even saw two "Allez Les Cougs" posters, which I especially appreciated. My favorite, though, was one directed to the Huskies and their fans:

Just Face It:
You're A
Football
Basketball
Volleyball
School

[Kylan's Blog] Home for the Week

Today Jaron and I traveled to the west side of the state for spring break. We got an early start and arrived home just before 1PM. It's nice to be back over here again, and it's especially good to see my folks. Both Mom and Dad seemed excited to see us. Tonight we had salmon for dinner and went over to the Pasquans' to watch Premonition.

My dad is working on moving his classroom to a new campus, and one of his goals is to get a working transmitter simulator his students can use. He asked if I could write some software to simulate different types of transmitter-related alarms and I said I could give it a try. Since I've been really happy with NetBeans lately, I decided to take my first shot at GUI programming in Java. So far it's going pretty well, and I'm gaining a lot of exposure to Swing and AWT. One thing I still need to figure out is how to play sound clips to represent alarms. There doesn't seem to be any super-simple way to do this, so it might have to get creative. Once I get a little further along I'll post the code along with some screen shots.

With this new project, I now have three major goals to accomplish over spring break:

1. Write a 20-page literature review
2. Work out all of the kinks in my research simulator
3. Finish at least a beta version of my transmitter simulator

Should be a busy break.

[Kylan's Blog] Tolerating Hard Faults in Microprocessor Array Structures

Last Thursday I made a presentation to my fault tolerant computing class. It was on a paper entitled "Tolerating Hard Faults in Microprocessor Array Structures" by Fred A. Bower, Paul G. Shealy, Sule Ozev, and Daniel J. Sorin. My slides are here. It went pretty well, although I wish I could have found a topic that's more in line with my research.

[Kylan's Blog] Invitations in the Wild

Last weekend Vic and Karl visited Pullman, and they helped us assemble our wedding invitations. Even with so many hands working feverishly, the project still took over 5 hours to complete. I was in charge of numbering the response cards, applying stamps, stuffing the envelopes, and licking them shut. Yesterday Kristen dropped them in the mail, so be looking for them to arrive within the next few days.

[Kylan's Blog] My February Songbook

This year, the end of February means the end of FAWM and the RPM Challenge. From the start, it was clear to me that I probably wouldn't be able to complete the RPM part of my goal. I just can't play enough instruments, I don't own any fancy recording equipment, and Jaron and I weren't able to get together often enough to lay down tracks. I did have high hopes for FAWM, though. That is, until this past week of school buried me alive.

I'm sad to say that I only ended up with 9 complete songs, but I'm happy to report that this is still a major accomplishment. Remember, prior to this month I had never written a song in my life. It was a completely new experience, and it helped me understand a lot more about music. For the most part, I'm pretty proud of my songs, too. Here they are:

"The Reason for Pain"

If our God is a God of Love
what's the reason for all this pain?
Our days are long, our lives are rough
we're just tired of toil and strain

Chorus:
The truth is that we're sinners
and we deserve so much worse
Father, save us from ourselves
forgive us, wicked and perverse

Almighty God, consume our hearts
apart from You, no one is good
We still do what we should not do
and keep avoiding what we should

But God alone has the power
to transform and renew your life
Call on Him to receive freedom
and meaning deeper than your pain

"If We Lived in Mexico"

I wish we lived in Mexico
I'd write my songs in Espanol
It'd be so fantastico
If we lived in Mexico

We'd spend all day in a siesta
Then at night have a fiesta
That's the life, it'd be the best-a
If we lived in Mexico

Play a game of street futbol
Drink tequila alcohol
Hear Arturo Sandoval
If we lived in Mexico

We'd invite good ol' Vicente
Yes, the former Presidente
To our humble little partay
If we lived in Mexico

"How Awesome Are Your Deeds"

Shout with joy, all the earth
Sing the glory of His name
Come and see what God has done
the awesome works on our behalf

Chorus:
How awesome are your deeds!
So great is your power
all that hate you cringe and run away
And all the earth bows down
they sing praise to you
They sing and shout and yell praise to your name

He turned the sea into dry land
They walked across on foot
He rules forever by his power
His eyes watch o'er the nations

Test us, O God
Refine us like silver
(x2)

"Think About These Things"

Chorus:
Whatever is true
Whatever is noble
Whatever is right and pure and lovely
Think about these things
Whatever is admirable
Whatever is excellent
Whatever is worthy of your praise
Think about these things

The enemies of the cross of Christ
Their destination is destruction
They are ruled by their stomachs
Shame is their glory
Their mind is on earthly things

Do everything without complaining
that you may become blameless and pure
children of God without fault
Shining like the stars
Holding out the word of life

Rejoice, show your gentleness to all
The Lord is near, so do not worry
Present your requests to God
And the peace of God
will guard your hearts and your minds

"To My Fiance"

I promise you will always know
how much I love you, baby
My love for you will always grow
no ifs or buts or maybes
Cause when I look into your eyes
or see your smile I realize
Our loves the kind that drives out fears
keeps up together throughout the years

I remember when we became friends
we spoke so long after the movie's end
We both like someone else
so we were free to be ourselves
Then every week we met for lunch
we talked and ate and laughed a bunch
In the hard times we cried
but you were always by my side

Standing that day on that bridge
you didn't know but I sure did
Our lives were about to change
a better kind of change
I said some words, you listened to me
we both looked at the scenery
I dropped down on one knee
and asked you to marry me

I can't wait to marry you in June
you'll be my bride and I'll be your groom
Surrounded by friends and family
It'll be a beautiful ceremony
We'll start a new life, have kids of our own
work really hard and buy a home
Fill it with love and laughter
live happily ever after

"Valentines"

Kristen when I look in your eyes
I feel a love so deep inside

You have a smile that warms my day
And makes my cares just melt away

I love you more than songs can show
But I wrote this so you would know

I am yours and you are mine
We make the perfect Valentines.

"Hear My Cry, O God"

From the ends of the earth I call,
I call you as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock
that's higher than I.

For you have been my refuge, God,
a strong tower against the foe.
Hear my cry, O God;
listen to my prayer.

I long to dwell in your tent
and take refuge forever in
the shelter of your wings.
the shelter of your wings.

"Lots of Snow"

Snow snow snow-snow snow
snow-snow-snow snow snow

Oh no! Oh no snow!
Snow oh no! Oh snow no!

Snow is here, snow is there
Snow is even in your hair.

Everywhere. Snow is there.
Who is there? snow is there!

Do you even really care?
You should really truly care?

I just saw a polar bear.
Who what where? A Polar Bear.

Was he at the county fair? No
hibernating in his lair.

Wait that's just snowshoe hare
Stupid boy,
Hey that's not fair!

If you hunt him use a snare
Eat that yellow snow I dare

Snow snow snow-snow snow
snow-snow-snow snow snow

Snow snow snow-snow snow
snow-snow-snow snow snow

The end.

"Like Losing a Friend"

I refused to believe that last spring was the end
We were roommates and pals... you were my best friend
But I should've known better, I'd seen all the signs
When summers came round, you cut all the lines

--- Chorus ---
I miss you my friend, you seem so far away
I wish we could talk, every couple of days
A phone call, an email, a letter or card
You'd think that it wouldn't be hard
You'd think that it wouldn't be hard

--- Verse 2 ---
Now, I'm half to blame, yes I could've done more
More patient persistence, keep an open door
But this time around, the summer is endless
Please tell me now, how do we mend this

--- Bridge ---
We're at a grand canyon, you're on that side
I'm reaching out, but your face you hide
Come back to me friend, we'll turn a new leaf
We'll start over new, and forget all this grief

-- Outro ---
I refused to believe that last spring was the end
But it felt a whole lot, like losing a friend
It felt a whole lot... like losing a friend

[Kylan's Blog] Honeymoon Tickets

A couple of days ago, Kristen and I purchased the airplane tickets for our honeymoon.  We're flying down to Tampa, Florida for a week, starting from St. Louis and returning to Spokane. Now we just have to figure out what to do while we're there. It will probably involve venturing down to Naples, and maybe even Key West. We'll have to see.

[Kylan's Blog] Almost Through

Well, this week has gone surprisingly well, considering the to-do list from my previous post. I finished the computer exercise by staying up all night, but didn't lose much more sleep over anything else. I worked hard on my research-related activities, and my adviser was really impressed at the final product. Studying for my exam was one of the last things I wanted to do, but I put in my time and the exam went well. Now all I have left are a couple of hours at SEL and my presentation this afternoon. Thank God for His help this week, it would have been too much to handle on my own.

[Jaron's Blog] Important Events

     As a college student I have been privileged to be a busy person.  Hooray!  But there are some important events coming up very soon in the next few weeks, this week included.
     The first one is tomorrow, on Thursday.  Even though it is not mentioned on the DupyCal, there is a Jazz Band performance at the WSU Art Museum at the noon hour.  All are invited and welcome to listen.  Sorry for the short notice, but the band itself only found out this week.  It feels pretty last minute to us.
     Secondly, the Bunco Party that I am hosting in Honors Hall is at 7:00 p.m. on Friday.  I would recommend coming, because there will be stuff for everybody, in the form of hard candy.
     The next thing is something interesting.  The Washington Secretary of State is coming to the Pullman area next week, and it will be interesting to hear him speak.  He will be appearing at a church, and then at Neill Public Library.  I don't not currently know the times or dates for those two events.
     Additionally, ASWSU elections are commencing soon, and I encourage all WSU students to do some minor research on the candidates, concerning they have a pretty sizable budget.
     The week of March 10th will be WSU's Spring Break, and after that week I will have some papers and tests to do.
     That is basically the whole gist of the post, things that I'm finding interesting that will be coming up, and just a short briefing on the whole situation in terms of times and events.

[Kylan's Blog] No Rest for the Weary

This is a very packed week for me. It's funny because most of the semester has been pretty reasonable, and now I'm staying up late every night. Last night (this morning?) I went to bed at 6:30AM, only to wake up for class again at 8. Here's what I've been working on:

1. creating multiplier algorithm and demo program for my research
2. reading a proposal for future work by my research group
   
3. completing computer exercise for my data communications class
4. studying for an exam in data communications
5. reading papers for my fault tolerance class
6. choosing papers for my fault tolerance literature survey
   
7. selecting a paper for presentation in fault tolerance
8. preparing the slides for my fault tolerance presentation
9. helping EECS start a solar power display for the Palouse Science Discovery Center

At least it will all be over by Friday.

[Kylan's Blog] The Reason for Pain

Another song in my quest for deeper praise and worship songs. This one covers a serious question that many people find quite troublesome.

The idea for this subject came to me after listening to an interview on NPR's Fresh Air. It featured religious studies professor Bart D. Ehrman, an individual who "converted" from Christianity to agnosticism after he couldn't reconcile the problem of pain ('If God is Love, why do people suffer?'). On the show he stated his arguments and rebutted common explanations, but I was surprised that he didn't consider the possibility that we deserve at least as much pain as we get in our lives.

There was no pain before the Fall, and the Bible is very clear that the consequences of sin are pain and, eventually, death. We are depraved creatures who don't deserve to live in God's world. The Bible teaches that God is just and that He hates sin. It is only by God's grace and love that we are saved from His awesome wrath. We are unworthy of everything we have in our lives, especially since we should be experiencing the ultimate punishment of Hell. With this point of view, we should even rejoice in our worst suffering because it is still better than what we really deserve.

Of course, my arguments rely on a number of presuppositions, so atheists and others will be quick to discount them. Fine, I can argue the merits of my assumptions later. But Mr. Ehrman was a Christian before he lost his faith in God. This means that he shared my basis for thought. I just don't see how we as Christians can have the audacity to expect a cushy life from God. Instead, we should realize how blessed we are and praise God for the overly gracious gifts He's given us.

Mr. Ehrman, I think your should reconsider your position. This song's for you.

"The Reason for Pain"

If our God is a God of Love
what's the reason for all this pain?
Our days are long, our lives are rough
we're just tired of toil and strain

Chorus:
The truth is that we're sinners
and we deserve so much worse
Father, save us from ourselves
forgive us, wicked and perverse

Almighty God, consume our hearts
apart from You, no one is good
We still do what we should not do
and keep avoiding what we should

But God alone has the power
to transform and renew your life
Call on Him to receive freedom
and meaning deeper than your pain

[Kylan's Blog] If We Lived In Mexico

"If We Lived in Mexico"

I wish we lived in Mexico
I'd write my songs in Espanol
It'd be so fantastico
If we lived in Mexico

We'd spend all day in a siesta
Then at night have a fiesta
That's the life, it'd be the best-a
If we lived in Mexico

Play a game of street futbol
Drink tequila alcohol
Hear Arturo Sandoval
If we lived in Mexico

We'd invite good ol' Vicente
Yes, the former Presidente
To our humble little partay
If we lived in Mexico

[Kylan's Blog] Opportunities with Avista

Today I went to a talk given by Don Kopczynski, Vice President of Operations at Avista Utilities. He spoke on the current and future challenges facing power utilities, with an emphasis on opportunities for new graduates at Avista. As I've learned from my time at SEL, the business of power generation and distribution is dynamic and exciting. Also, because of the pending retirement of the baby boomers, utility companies are hurting for young engineers. Don said that Avista will experience 50% employee turnover over the next five years on account of this.

[Kylan's Blog] Fidel's Void

I don't expect it to make any sense... but it's funny to us.

Kylan Robinson wrote
at 4:59pm

Che....

Here are my picks for "Leaders of the Enslaved World, Version 2.0." The world is a rapidly changing place, so it makes sense that evil must evolve over the course of time.

1) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran and avid hockey fan
2) Kim Jong Il, Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, and former James Bond villain
3) Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela and Beach Boys enthusiast. Plus, he has prior experience.

I admit that some of these qualifications are unverified, but I feel that I am a very good judge of character so they must be true.

What do you think?

Your friend,
Fuser

Weston Stover wrote
at 11:36pm yesterday

Fuser,
Do you realize that two-thirds of the "Leaders of the Enslaved World" are now defunct? Shall we find replacements or simply retire their numbers? I feel there may be deserving candidates waiting for a chance.
Regretfully,
Che

Kylan Robinson wrote
at 10:52pm yesterday

Dear Che,
We must organize a fitting memorial for our beloved Fidel. This is a very sad day. And he's not even dead yet.
-Fuser

[Kylan's Blog] Planet EECS Down

Planet EECS has been down for the last few days. On February 7th, it contributed 1,247 page views to the DupyBlog, according to Feedburner. The next day, after that insane amount of traffic, the site went down. I emailed the administrator, and he said he was working on a solution. Hopefully it will come soon, because most of the DupyBlog's publicity comes from this site.

[Kylan's Blog] Philippians 4:8

In Sunday school last week, the topic related to Philippians 4:8. I decided to try to write a song about it.

"Think About These Things"

Chorus:
Whatever is true
Whatever is noble
Whatever is right and pure and lovely
Think about these things
Whatever is admirable
Whatever is excellent
Whatever is worthy of your praise
Think about these things

The enemies of the cross of Christ
Their destination is destruction
They are ruled by their stomachs
Shame is their glory
Their mind is on earthly things

Do everything without complaining
that you may become blameless and pure
children of God without fault
Shining like the stars
Holding out the word of life

Rejoice, show your gentleness to all
The Lord is near, so  do not worry
Present your requests to God
And the peace of God
will guard your hearts and your minds

[Kylan's Blog] Praise and Worship

Here's a try at an interesting song. I wanted to try something in the style of modern day praise and worship songs, but with lyrics straight from the Bible. I didn't change the words too much, so it's kind of a fun contrast.

"How Awesome are Your Deeds"

Shout with joy, all the earth
Sing the glory of His name
Come and see what God has done
the awesome works on our behalf

Chorus:
How awesome are your deeds!
So great is your power
all that hate you cringe and run away
And all the earth bows down
they sing praise to you
They sing and shout and yell praise to your name

He turned the sea into dry land
They walked across on foot
He rules forever by his power
His eyes watch o'er the nations

Test us, O God
Refine us like silver
(x2)

[HiPerCoPS] Multiplier Computation Process

Here's the process for setting up and calculating a result with a multiplier:

1. Create the multiplier
   
2. Specify the operands
   
3. Perform the computation
4. Return the result

Of course, this is hugely generalized. I'll write more about the details of each step in separate posts.

[HiPerCoPS] Cell Interconnect

I really want to find a simple and clean way to connect the cells of a functional unit together. One option is to implement each cell with eight different pointers and connect the cells directly with these pointers. Connecting these pointers to an intermediate class is another possibility. This could help if I ever need to model delay, pipelining, or connection faults, but adds complexity to the overall system. Maybe the cells could account for delay, pipelining, and faults just as easily. I'll have to think about it more.

[HiPerCoPS] SVN Repository Up

Today I figured out how to connect my NetBeans IDE to the Google Code SubVersion repository for the project. Now you can browse through the latest version of my code, which at the moment only includes the multiplier algorithm proof of concept.

[Kylan's Blog] Falling Behind

Well, I'm falling behind for FAWM and RPM. I've written 5 songs, so it's not hopeless, but I have to write a few songs this weekend. Here's my latest one. I wrote it for Valentine's day.

"To My Fiance"

I promise you will always know
how much I love you, baby
My love for you will always grow
no ifs or buts or maybes
Cause when I look into your eyes
or see your smile I realize
Our loves the kind that drives out fears
keeps up together throughout the years

I remember when we became friends
we spoke so long after the movie's end
We both like someone else
so we were free to be ourselves
Then every week we met for lunch
we talked and ate and laughed a bunch
In the hard times we cried
but you were always by my side

Standing that day on that bridge
you didn't know but I sure did
Our lives were about to change
a better kind of change
I said some words, you listened to me
we both looked at the scenery
I dropped down on one knee
and asked you to marry me

I can't wait to marry you in June
you'll be my bride and I'll be your groom
Surrounded by friends and family
It'll be a beautiful ceremony
We'll start a new life, have kids of our own
work really hard and buy a home
Fill it with love and laughter
live happily ever after

[Kylan's Blog] Current Playlist

A couple of weeks ago I made an "On the Go" playlist for my iPod, and it has quickly become my favorite set of songs to listen to.

"Pretender" - Foo Fighters

I've liked this song ever since hearing about it on NPR's Fresh Air.

"Check Yes Juliet" - We the Kings

Once in a while, one of the iTunes free songs is actually good music.

"New Soul" - Yael Naim

This is the song on the MacBook Air commercials. I like it because I would really like to get a MacBook Air, but I also think it's a creative song with an unusual but great sound.

"Learning to Die" - Jon Foreman

In my opinion, this is one of the best songs Jon has ever written. In his life. I really like the melody and the lyrics. The background horns and vocals are spot on.

"Calling You" - Blue October

Kristen and I discovered this song together. My favorite part is the last chorus.

"Rebuild" - Switchfoot with Relient K

I kick myself every time I remember that I missed out on seeing them perform live. Also, I like the idea of being called part of the "Re" generation.

There it is. Six songs. Check them out.

[HiPerCoPS] Goals for 2/19/08

1. Implement multiplier cell types A-F at the cell level.
2. Establish inter-cell connections.
3. Perform multiplications.
   

[HiPerCoPS] Lowest Level of Abstraction

Today I met with Dr. Delgado, and we decided that the Cell will be the lowest level of abstraction for my simulator software. This is good because it will allow me to take a few shortcuts to speed up the development process. For example, if we included the Element level I would have to spend a lot of time implementing single bit operations. Of course, this might create some problems when we try to branch out of the math mode realm and implement some memory units. I think it will be alright, though, since my software architecture can differentiate between math cells and memory cells.

[Jaron's Blog] Former Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin

I had an interesting opportunity this week to listen to the former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin.  She has served 29 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, the diplomatic corps wing of the Department of State.  Her stories were interesting and informative.  She has spent time in several foreign nations and worked in the UN dealing with refugee problems at one time.  She is currently the President of the Middle East Institute, a think tank based in Washington D.C.

Many people posed some interesting questions to her, which she answered with a lot of good information.  It's really a good opportunity to learn not only about the situation of foreign affairs in general, but also about the inner workings of government agencies like the State Department.  About half of what she talked about was concerning the multiple bureaucratic levels of organization that she has dealt with over the years, not just in the United States, but also in the governments of other nations.

Another interesting topic was the attitudes toward the United States and Americans in foreign countries.  For the most part, her stories indicated that foreign nations and peoples are rarely, if ever, lukewarm toward the United States.  Either there is a lot of good sentiment or bad sentiment, but usually not anything in between.  At least, this is what I heard from the tidbits she had shared.

Overall, it was an exciting opportunity to go hear her speak and to ask her questions.  I had some questions that I did ask and did get answered, and so I am pretty satisfied with that opportunity.  The speaker series that the Global Studies department probably has some more good people that they are going to call up to WSU, so it will probably be a good idea to look out and attend those as well.

[Kylan's Blog] Valentines

This one's a little early for Valentine's Day, but that's okay.

Kristen when I look in your eyes
I feel a love so deep inside

You have a smile that warms my day
And makes my cares just melt away

I love you more than songs can show
But I wrote this so you would know

I am yours and you are mine
We make the perfect Valentines.

FAWM page

[Kylan's Blog] A Disappointing "Beyond" Department

Yesterday Kristen and I went over to Moscow to start our wedding gift registry at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It was pretty fun to run around the store with bar code scanners and zap everything in sight. We registered for a lot of kitchen and bath items that will come in really handy. We also selected couple of more expensive items as "wish list" items. In the end, we scanned over 120 different bar codes. The whole process took a couple of hours, and I was exhausted when it was all over. It was fun, but I must say that I was a bit disappointed with the "beyond" department of the store. I was expecting more gizmos and gadgets, but it was mostly filled with massage pads and shaving mirrors.

[Kylan's Blog] "Hear My Cry, O God"

This is song number three on the month. One of my goals for FAWM was to adapt some scripture into song lyrics. This is the first song in that category, and it's based on the first half of Psalm 61.

"Hear My Cry, O God"

From the ends of the earth I call,
I call you as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock
that's higher than I.

For you have been my refuge, God,
a strong tower against the foe.
Hear my cry, O God;
listen to my prayer.

I long to dwell in your tent
and take refuge forever in
the shelter of your wings.
the shelter of your wings.

[Kylan's Blog] Craigslist Post

I just posted Kristen's entertainment center on Craigslist. You can view it here.