Liquid Nonsense

I think I have a gland that secretes meth, and I'll explain why. A reasonable chunk of today was spent reading over some old blog entries that Phil directed my way.

It isn't "weird" per se to read someone else's writing from a time long before they knew you, but it's definitely an odd feeling to get a sense of the change in their life. Such activities make a great basis for positive creative mental adventures. In a very real way I wish I could go back three years and meet past-Phil. Three years is a monumental amount of time when you really think about it. Hell, one year is a lot when you consider that 52 weeks, or 365 days, have come and gone. I'm going to summarize this with the sentiment that there is a very humanizing effect to reading someone's thoughts and feelings. Am I allowed to openly say that I'm ridiculously attracted to my boyfriend for his humanity?

Two years ago I started my first blog. It was hosted at endofmorality.com, and since then I have long since let my ownership of the domain expire. My writing only effectively lasted for about one year. Earlier this evening I decided to go digging through my older computer equipment to find Akuma. Akuma was my old Pentium-II 266Mhz web server that housed my own personal memex project.

It didnt' take too long to find the old box, and a few minutes later extract the contents of the harddrive...

I re-read through one year of my experiences from when I was 21/22. The first 40 or so entries I sound.....angry. After thinking about what was going on at the time I think I understand why. If I recall correctly I started that website in the later part of my sophomore year of college. It evolved into my blog sometime over the next year I think. So that means I started writing spring semester of my junior year. I was busy. Really, really busy pretty much 24x7 while school was in session since I was a freshman. So I sound angry because I was super busy, usually was down to my last strand of patience when I was writing, and had too many projects in progress at once.

My body secreted meth, evidently.

Part of my "perspective" problem is I like to apply "today" retroactively. I need to make sure I don't do that. It's bad for my mental health. It's really only since this December/January of THIS year that I've had actual, honest breathing room in 5 years. When I wonder why I wasn't out having crazy sex and drugs (I'm not that pure, but you get the idea) I act like a dork, like perhaps I did the wrong thing with my time. I know that isn't true because I am the sum of my experiences and they're responsible for the badass I am today. Especially the part that knows I'm a badass.

The other thing I forget fairly often that tonight really grounded me on his just how much I accomplished in college. In retrospect, yes, I definitely should have been having more sex and developing my personal life a bit more fully. Statistically speaking, I'm ahead of the curve in that respect as well, but I like to go for the gold in everything. It's the inner damned over achiever.

Normally I don't take to rampant egotism or standing on my soapbox but I'm going to summarize some college accomplishments. You have been warned.

---Unchecked ego follows---

In reality my undergraduate education, with the exception of housing, was free. My award list includes, but is not limited to:
Arizona Regent Scholar
Fluor Foundation Scholar
Honeywell Excellence in Engineering
APC Power Award Recongition

My research as an undergrad was sponsored independently both by the National Science Foundation as well as the local Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative program. My work with FURI became the template for future semester's of endorsment. Also, to the best of my knowledge, I was the only member of the symposium whose work went on to be published.

I joined a group that wrote a very detailed business proposal to request approximately $13K in venture capital to start a business from the Edson Entrepenuership Initiative during it's inaugural year of support. Our business model was competing against bioengineers, business students, and seasoned vetrans of the semiconductor field.

I joined the honors program at the end of my freshman year and made up a year's worth of honors credits in a semester. I didn't sleep, but the honors academic advisors nearly shit themselves when they saw my transcripts.

Did I mention I graduated with roughly a 3.8 GPA?

My junior year I was inducted into the Tau Beta Pi engineering honors society and was the president during my senior year. I went to two district and one national convention as well as attempt to maintain local operations throughout the year. I still maintain some contact with my former district advisors.

I worked in the Networks and Optimizations Lab for a year. I co-authored and published three papers that were published four times. For those interested, those works are:

Jian Tang, Guoliang Xue, Chris Chandler, Weiyi Zhang; "Interference-aware routing in multihop wireless networks using directional antennas"; IEEE InfoCom '05.

Jian Tang, Guoliang Xue, Chris Chandler; "Interference-Aware Routing and Bandwidth Allocation for QoS Provisioning in Multihop Wireless Networks"; Journal of Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing

Jian Tang, Guoliang Xue, Chris Chandler, Weiyi Zhang; "Link Scheduling with Power Control for Throughput and Fairness Enhancement in Multihop Wireless Networks"; Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Wire/Wireless Networks (QSHINE) '05.

Jian Tang, Guoliang Xue, Chris Chandler, Weiyi Zhang; "Link Scheduling with Power Control for Throughput and Fairness Enhancement in Multihop Wireless Networks"; IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

I'm still the most proud of the first one. IEEE InfoCom received 1,419 papers and only 250 were selected for publication. That's an acceptance ratio of less than 17% from the international refereed scientific community. Boo-yah.

I worked throughout college. I had jobs at GameStop, the United Studios, three years with Classroom Support, my research post, and one or two other odd jobs in there not counting my present employer (large famous Internet company that prefers not to be named in print) that pays me as a software engineer.

I did other stuff. A lot of other stuff that I just don't have the energy to recant right now.

---End unchecked ego---

Now I remember where my personal development time went....it went toward sleeping. In retrospect it's no wonder people fear me in an academic setting. I have mad-crazy powers like my meth-secreting gland. My first legit scientific achievement came out at 21. No wonder I've been feeling bizarrely retrospective for the last few months. I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself with this much "free" time, and my emotions are getting the chance to run around.