The End is Nigh!

It's the home stretch. Last few weeks of school. For some, this would be heartwarming. Last few things to clean up, time to go out and start Christmas shopping (Amazon.com, you are one of my saviors), and all that.

Not true for me.

Let's recap.

In Clinic, Prof. David Harris commented last week we had about "6 weeks worth of work, and about 3 weeks to do it". This is also the same guy who casually looks at the problem I've been trying to fix for the last few days and solves it in a few minutes. So, yeah, we're in trouble. The key factor is to get what we call Rev1 done of the schematics. This first involves getting Rev0 done. Rev0 means your schematics simulate correctly (or at least as expected) in Verilog and SPICE. The SPICE simulations barely got up and running last week. And, as conventional wisdom says, these kinds of things are so simple that they'll work the first time. WRONG. Assume everything will fail, plan ahead, then double the time you expect that will take, and you're still probably missing something. Trust me. Something ALWAYS goes horribly wrong. Luckily, I have Schematics simulating in Verilog. Or, at least I did. Some weird bug has arisen and one of my schematics doesn't work anymore. See? Even when you think it's done, it isn't. Gr.... The scary part is I'm perhaps the closest to finished out of my team. As much as I'd like to pat myself on the back, it also scares me how behind we are as a team. I'm usually the person lagging behind. Then again, I crash if I don't get at least 6 hours of sleep, so I guess they get the chance to lap me by doing all-nighters. Not that I advocate all-nighters, just that it's not a viable option for me if you expect me to be cognizant the next day.

Next, MicroPs. I'm building with another student, Julien Dage, a MIDI synthesizer. It takes in MIDI signals from a keyboard and uses wave tables in the memory to synthesize music. Unfortunately, there's a few problems. First, it takes too long to process each individual note we want to play. I think, according to simulation, that I can get 3 notes. I want 8 notes. Options now include tweaking code at the assembly level, re-writing a part of the code to use a faster system, and slowing down how fast we output music. We also are having issues on the analog side of things. Curse that real world and all it's foolish inaccuracies. I demand more binary values!

Next, Hums. Philosophy final paper, Music final exam. Um. Yeah. Not quite as scary, but I still have a few loose ends I have to tie up. These are the only two classes that I'm either on schedule or ahead of schedule. Go figure.

Next, GameSHMC. I'd like to petition for more money for our budget. However, that means I have to prepare a presentation on why we deserve more money for the year.

Next, Family. Right now I'm at home. Thanksgiving was full of good food. Unfortunately, I can't access all the stuff I need to do the above mentioned work. Well, I can access the Clinic stuff, except it takes five times as long to get anything done. On the other hand, I can't snub my family. We've compromised and I'm heading back later today to do more work. Still gotta schedule moving back after this semester is over.

Next, everything else. I have a giant list of games on my door that I haven't played. Heck, I haven't even played stuff that came out over the summer, let alone the stuff people are raving about that just came out like Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead. Oh, and that Red Alert thing. Sorry, I'm not quite as avid a RTS player, although I do love blowing up the computer with nuclear weaponry.

Anyhow, that's where I'm at. No time left and everyone wants me to cash in yesterday.

Back to work.