Houston Confusion

So, I'm starting out on my fourth week in and third post from Beaumont, TX. It is a beautiful area, and the weather is always beautiful, and the city is nice, but I have to say: I prefer Houston (skyline to the right). I mean, yes, the mess of roads that go through Houston seems to confuse my GPS more often than not, sending me in the wrong direction half the time. However, the third largest city in the U.S. seems to be a shining example of the success of the American economy in this dark economic time. I have been to quite a few different places in Houston and have not yet seen any slums or even any less than nice areas. Maybe I just haven't been to the right areas, but regardless, there are just way too many huge houses in downtown Houston.

So, as you might have guessed, I have been to Houston several times now. Last Saturday I went to Houston for the evening with a couple of friends from the research program with which I'm involved. We went to The Galleria, the fourth largest mall in the U.S., and it was spectacular. I was more impressed with this mall (its selection, cleanliness, and overall style) than I was with the Mall of America. There seemed to be a store for everything; there was even a Sony store, which I don't think I'd ever seen before. We also found a little coffee shop that was a bit off the beaten track, but it was very unique.

This Saturday we again went to Houston, this time with a more defined plan in mind. We managed to cram five people in my car (a decision later regretted by those in the backseat) and we made the hour trip to Houston. We bought a CityPass for Houston, which allowed us a nine-day window to see 6 different Houston attractions, such as the aquarium or Johnson space center. This Saturday we visited the Houston Zoo, which was good but not the best I've seen, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which had an impressive display on energy and energy sources, such as hydrogen, oil, natural gas, wind power, etc. Those two took up most of the afternoon, though we had to take a bit of a break to catch our breath after the zoo, since it was about 100°F outside, and we'd been walking for quite a while. In the evening, we went to the Alamo Drafthouse Theater, which was a Theater combined with a full-service restaurant, and had dinner while we watched Up (which is an excellent movie, by the way). After such a long day, we were all quite beat, and headed home. Even though it was evening, we went with the top down, because it was 97° outside when we left. Interestingly enough, it had dropped to 81° by the time we reached Beaumont; whether this was because we were out of the city, or because we went north slightly, I'm not sure.

Friday was Scott's birthday, so some of us took him out to play putt-putt and then out to Sonic for an evening semi-meal. The dining halls here are interesting, because lunch lasts from 11-1, but dinner only goes from 4:30-6, which means by the time 9'o'clock rolls around, some of us are hungry again, which explains the half-meal at Sonic. Looking back on it, it seems like a lame way to spend a birthday, but it was really a lot of fun.

I also had to give a presentation on Friday, giving a little background on my research subject and then my direction of research I am going to take and a projected timeline for the remaining weeks. Evidently it went fairly well, or so I was told by others.

Oh, and continuing in my line of thought about ways Texas is different from the Midwest: Whereas doing U-Turns is often frowned upon in many places in the Midwest, here in Texas they have devoted U-Turn lanes. For example, if you get off the highway on an exit, and you get to the intersection, there will be one lane to go straight, one lane to turn right, one to turn left, and then an entire lane devoted to pulling a highway U-Turn; it takes you right through to going the other direction on the road on the other side of the highway, from where you can get right back on the highway going the other way, with only a yield sign in your way, no stoplights. Also, on many non-highway roads, there are devoted U-turn turn lanes that cut into the median. They are specifically posted as "no-left-turn", so they only leave the option of a U-Turn.
Anyway, enough about that. Not much else to report, so... so long from Texas, for now.

P.S. I want to encourage you gamers (and non-gamers too!) out there to try the game Braid. It is a fantastic game that gives a whole new take on the 2-D side-scrolling adventure. The one-man development team took three years of his life to put this project together, and it is one of the best games I have ever played. It was a pure joy to play, much like Portal. It seems short, compared to the fairly large price tag, but it really was worth every penny. Braid can be downloaded for the PC through steam. Here's a Youtube link to the game trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqtSKkyJgFM

Summer starts with Texas

I can't believe it's been almost two years since I actually wrote anything on my blog. You would think I would have things to write about, but I guess not. In reality, my life has not changed that much. In the intervening summer, I did another stint at NSWC Crane, working as an engineering intern yet again. I also switched my major from Electrical Engineering to Computer Engineering; that's kind of a fine switch, and there's really only a difference once you get to some of the higher level courses. CompE will let me do more of what I want to do without all the EE classes getting in the way.
I guess the most significant thing to report is this: I am writing this blog post from Beaumont, Texas on the campus of Lamar University. At the moment, I find myself unable to fall asleep, but yet direly in need of sleep, and so I thought that perhaps piddling around facebook and writing a blog post would help calm my nerves enough to fall asleep.
But what am I doing in Texas, you might ask? (Or maybe you don't. Whatever.) The story is this: Earlier this spring I applied for and was accepted into a "Research Experience for Undergraduates" program sponsored by the National Science Foundation that was based out of the computer science department of Lamar University, in Beaumont, TX (about an hour east of Houston, 20 min. west of the Louisiana-Texas border, and half an hour from the Gulf Coast). I really had no idea what I would be doing until I arrived down here on the 24th of May. I actually brought a car down, thinking it might be useful (it is), and I braved a 16 hour drive from Bloomfield to Beaumont in order to get here.
There are 10 of us that were accepted into the program, and 7 of us are not from Lamar University. They put all 7 of us right next to each other in the LU dorms, which is really nice and has led to us becoming an even closer group than we might have. Most of us are from the midwest, with a few exceptions. Now, we are all mostly working on seperate research projects. However, the professor in charge of our program, Dr. Kami Makki, insisted that we be given at least a cursory introduction to every person's project, so that we had some level of understanding about others projects. Everyone has very interesting projects.
My research that I have been assigned delves into semantic caching and query processing in mobile environments. To put that in laymen's terms, I am looking at figuring out how to most effectively temporarily store data in your mobile devices, such as cell phones, that you have downloaded from the internet. The project itself deals with theoretical data in the form of rows from a database, such as a parts database, or an employee database. The part I am working with, semantic query processing, involves taking a request generated by the user "I want to see all employees from list a with a salary over $50k" and seeing if some, any, or all of the information requested can be retreived from temporary storage on the your cell phone, which would happen if you just accessed that same list. That way, the device doesn't have to connect to the internet for as long as it would otherwise.
I have also been able to get out and enjoy Texas and observe just how different this region is than what I am used to. I was able to take some time off on Saturday and cruise around exploring the area with a couple other people, and we even made it down to the Gulf of Mexico. Beaumont is not exactly the nicest town the the whole world, and it is clear that the city is past its prime. It seems to be an oil town thats running out of oil. All in all though, I am glad I took this offer, because I am getting to experience living somewhere else for a while. I am so thankful for this opportunity.
Right now, I'm getting pretty tired, and I can't think of anything else I forgot to post.