Longtime / Gearing Up

It has certainly been a long time!

Back in august, when I was playing Halo 3 with Cameron Allen and Abe Katz on the Xbox 360, they were talking about blogs, which I guess had made me think about my own. And there are so many things that I would like to put on it, but at the same time, there are so many thoughts and feelings I'd like to keep my own.

This summer has been full of progress. I can best describe it as a bittersweet moment in my life. I take a look back at things I've done, and I chuckle a little. I'm so frickin young! What's the point on getting so serious about thoughts and feelings all the time? I really like those realizations. They make me feel grounded and at home. And embarrassed. When I arrived home from UMass last semester, I felt grounded. My family was here beside me. Learning all that you can from college and returning back home gives me a satisfaction of looking back at my accomplishments from a distance and being proud of them.

On the other hand, being at home from college for three months was a time to look forward. I saw three months of working hard, diligence, and (above all) patience. I worked for a massive company called BAE Systems under the Sensor Systems Engineering team working with simulation applications. That was exciting! INROADS sought to grab me from a couple of weekends during the summer for professional development, so I drove to Boston at times when I felt most vulnerable, and I enjoyed the warmth of my friends there; that made me feel reassuring. What was even more reassuring was the enjoyment I got out of singing with nine other guys and raising nearly three thousand dollars with proceeds going to the American Cancer Society! Viva la BoroughTones! Of course, the warmth from your closest friends, no matter how far or near they may be, is always a reassuring feeling when trouble runs through my mind.

What a summer!

At BAE Systems, I learned a lot about following through with work, the idea of Innovation and how important it is, and the value of hard work. Still, there's so much to do! I want to learn so much more that's out there because I know there are so many opportunities that I want to leverage. This upcoming semester at UMass is going to be ROCK SOLID. Here's the schedule:

1) CMPSCI 320: Introduction to Software Engineering (4)
2) Honors Colloquium 320H: Supplement to CMPSCI 320 (1)
3) CMPSCI 377: Introduction to Operating Systems (4)
4) CMPSCI 305: Social Issues in Computing (3)
5) CMPSCI 197U: Hands-On with UNIX (1)
6) CMPSCI 397PC: Problem Solving and the ACM Programming Contest (1)
7) Research with Ben Ransford and Kevin Fu! (3)

Total = 17 credits. Perfect.

What Research? I'll try to explain what I know so far.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags are ubiquitous to the information age society we all live in. From credit cards containing sensitive information to embedded devices like toll-paying transponders (Fast-Lane) in your car, these devices can be interrogated from a nearby RFID reader to acquire serial numbers for identifying people or products. Take, for example, the laptop shelves at the local Best Buy. There's been a lot of talk going around about embedding EPC (Electronic Product Code - a spinoff of RFID technology) devices into electronic products so that retail stores can readily keep track of inventory stock.

Professor Fu and company (the PRISMS lab @ UMass CS) have released much academic work on these RFID tags that can do more than just simply "identify" things; they are able to actually perform computation. What does that mean? A computational RIFD tag (known as "CRFID" tags) can actually do something useful or additional instead of simply providing a serial number which recognizes an HP laptop at Best Buy. That's all I know so far, so I have a lot to catch up on.