taks

then there is hope for me, a major fidgeter. my wife gets annoyed when i'm flicking my toes or bouncing my legs while sitting upright. i'll tell my doc gromnir recommended the fidget exercise plan (uh, joking, really)! taks

i should add, living out of state means i don't get to watch my teams play often, which sucks. i miss seeing games with my brothers. heck, i just miss my brothers. taks

can you believe the redbirds are in first! and they beat the rockies again last night. yes, i got to watch. there were two highlights worth mentioning, both are throws from ankiel from center field (on the warning track for the second). both resulted in an out at third. apparently the base runner was already rounding 2nd when ankiel picked up the ball for the second one and he managed a nearly 300 ft line drive straight to glaus at 3rd for an easy out (it was a double the guy was trying to extend to a triple). ludwick was standing next to ankiel when he picked it up (and he was also closer to the ball to begin with) shouting "three, three, three" knowing full well that ankiel was the only one of the two capable of getting the ball there without a hop. unbelievable. good to have a former pitcher capable of high 90s pitches in deep center. overall, the game was great. however, watching baseball is often not unlike watching certain things dry. lots of dead time in between the cool stuff (ankiel also homered, btw). taks

anxiety. caffeine makes it difficult to keep under control. of course, giving up caffeine causes issues, too. i'd prefer not to spend the rest of my life taking xanax. hopefully once i graduate things will improve. two weeks and two days to go. taks

the only way i can think of is to export the files to something photoshop can deal with, then wipe out the black edges. you may still see the "erasure" marks unless you know how to grab nearby background and use that to fill it in. i don't know how to do any of this, btw. yes, kaftan, they work, but some browsers have an issue loading pdfs over the web (there was a known issue with this that i thought had been resolved, but maybe not). the workaround is that you save to a file and then open into adobe after the save. taks

unfortunately, i can no longer drink caffeinated beverages. sniff. taks

raining today, no walk. taks

my buddy is preparing to do something similar with the code we've been working. he's stuck on a build script that was written for native compiles, but we have no choice but to cross-compile. apparently it isn't an easy task. so here i sit... taks

ooh, glad this was revised... need to point out that a team predicted to win 70 total this year is currently 21-12 in first place ahead of the cubs, who were predicted to win the central division. ahem. go redbirds. hopefully i'll get to watch the game against the rockies tonight (in denver) on FSN. not sure if COS suffers a blackout from denver games, however. probably, just to piss me off. taks

mine pays for nothing until i meet a $5k deductible. price you pay for working at a small company. given the health issues john and i have had this year, it's been a costly mistake on average. on the bright side, i do get "negotiated" terms on all my bills, which work out to about 75% or so of the actual bill. won't matter since i think we both "crossed over" already this year, hehe. taks

oh, btw, i submitted the final copy of my dissertation to the school library today. two unbound copies went to the library, and each of my five committee members gets a bound copy (plus one for myself). counting the $140 in fees (most of it was for proquest/UMI publishing to set up a copyright), that set me back $750. printing alone was nearly $500. color copies on high-quality laser jet (acid-free) paper was the kicker. oof. i've already got my "mastercard moment" dealy thought out for after i graduate. taks

my buddy/colleague* and i walked through the ravine behind his house today (with streak, his overly-excited dog). it took about 45 minutes and man it was hot. a blistering 71 today and the sun was shining bright. of course, 71 at 7000 feet with little wind and no clouds while walking up and down hills does qualify as hot. we got about 2/3 of the way and he stopped me and said "wait, be quiet, it was right here where we saw the bear last time, he was hiding behind that tree right there." i promptly informed streak that it was time to get a movin and let my buddy know that in no uncertain terms was i interested in "re-finding" the bear. it felt good, btw. i was a bit winded but not too bad. the last hill was probably 100 feet straight up and that's really the only place i struggled. the dog was pulling me so i had no choice but to hump it. we intend to do this daily now, apparently. next time i'll wear something other than top-siders. i'll bring bear repellent, too. taks * my buddy and i have worked together for almost 4 years, so he's also a colleague.

hopefully they'll give you better drugs than i got: darvocet. man that stuff bugged the heck out of me. i only took it the day of my surgery and just suffered with tylenol the next day. by the next night the only time i felt any pain was when i puffed on a cigarette. it felt like my stitches wanted to pull out. fortunately, too, the holes that were left over filled in quickly. yes, there will still be divots of a sort even though they stitch the holes up. some people get them large enough they have to constantly pick food out for a few months. i did not have that issue. taks

really... i've been wanting to see it. i like RDJr. anyway, and the character looks rather cool. uh, would this be recommended for a 5-year old? my son liked transformers if that makes a difference. taks

i've got a few i watched not too long ago worth mentioning. vacancy: not an entirely bad premise... a couple gets stranded for the night at some hole in the wall hotel in the middle of nowhere. they begin to watch the tapes next to the VCR and realize that the "horror flicks" they're watching were actually filmed in the room they're in. ut oh, we're the next subjects for a new snuff film. forget for the moment that something like this could go on for a long time before people noticed. what got me was that the story played out with the typical stupid horror film characters that we get in B movies. i mean, my god, how stupid do you have to park across the parking lot from your room, leaving your cell in the car (or wherever, they show it getting mashed at one point). your in a snuff film and you really think the guy on the other side of the phone from the room or the booth outside is legit? are people really so stupid that they scream announcing their whereabouts when hiding? it took them a half hour (show time) to figure out how the suckers were getting in to their room (which was an unbelievable dump). the list goes on and on. even the killers were stupid, meeting their respective demises in oh so typical fashion. we watched till the end solely to see whether the stupid couple would survive or not (that, and there was nothing else on). 40 year old virgin (director's cut, but edited for USA): not too bad. i laughed out loud many times and i thought the story was rather cute. however, i wish i didn't have to watch for 40 years to see the end. they could EASILY have cut 45 minutes off of this thing and it would have made it's point just fine, and i missed the first 45 minutes or so. on USA, this was a 3-hour epic. star wars is OK (uh, 4, 5 and 6) for 3 hours, 40 year old virgin ain't quite as OK. taks

i had the same problem once, and i think the same resolution. taks

yeah, i got that... thanks everyone, btw. it has been a very long and hard road, and i would not wish the last year on anyone, even if i didn't like 'em. it is no wonder i'm taking xanax daily along with double doses of prilosec hoping it's an ulcer and not something more serious. taks

i already have a fairly lucrative job (i've been working for almost 15 years already, and i had an MS before starting this degree). i was hired a year ago under the assumption that i would complete my degree sooner than later. and no, i'm not a workaholic. in fact, i'm one of those rare folks that has the ultimate geek job that completely forgets about what it is he does during the day upon returning home. i know some folks that leave the office and continue to work on problems all night. they read papers and books and never put it down. not me. i'll still do some minor research with my advisor - we have at least one paper planned and two of my committee members brought up some things that makes me think there's another to collaborate on in the near future as well - but i'm not an engineer when i'm at home. we'll camp nearly every weekend we can this summer, and the fall brings more skiing (which i could not do this year). my family suffered while i was worling on my school stuff, but that is over now minus some red-tape (i just hit "send" on the final copy to my advisor less than 5 minutes ago). taks

yeah, i guess they call it a "terminal" degree for a reason. not an RF guy, though i do understand it enough to work in that realm. the toll this degree has taken on my health cannot be ignored, btw. taks

technically "engineering" with an emphasis in electrical engineering because UCCS had to combine all of its phd programs under one umbrella since the smaller departments were not graduating enough phds to keep the state happy. realisitically, it is "electrical engineering" with an emphasis in communications and signal processing. my dissertation was a DS-CDMA receiver that combined a channel estimation method with an adaptive symbol detection method. DS-CDMA is the method most PCS (cell-phone) carriers in the US use. taks

wanna lay odds on the likelihood of me hitting the pub shortly? shoot some stick, drink some... anything, get a ride home and take lots of advil in the morning. taks

All the best just got back after the celebration beer. i successfully defended my dissertation today. in exactly 3 weeks, i'll be posting (for one day) as drtaks. man i feel relieved. thanks, gorth. mark

haven't done it yet, but i defend my dissertation in 2 hours and 15 minutes. taks

just a slight impediment... working at another company and all that, you know. taks

they're spending plenty on that, too. trust me. unfortunately, the kind of technology that would be useful (at least as useful as typical radar systems) against such threats is an unbelievable leap forward in what is currently within our capabilities. lots of research going into this. lots of ideas. not much progress that i've seen. taks