Quarter of a Century

I’ve officially been alive for a quarter of a century now. Actually, I’ve been in this state since the 12th, but I was eith lazy or insanely busy since then. I didn’t do anything all that special - just went out to eat. I got a couple of cool shirts from my sweetie. I don’t feel any different than I did before 25 of course, but I suppose it’s a milestone of some sort. I expect the 30 mark will hit heavier on me, but then again I hope to be doing something entirely different when I hit 30.

Publishing

Most of what was making me busy earlier was writing and doing experiments for a paper which I submitted. We finally got two of the robots in our lab working with GPS at the same time and on wireless for long enough to do some experiments with the interface which is in itself not all that novel but really hasn’t been presented before. I would have liked to get more experiments in but the sky started threatening and none of our robots do well when wet. So we went back inside and did a little bit of work on the paper. It is a bit better now than it was before, only because we had some more time to really show off what the little system that we created can do. It got accepted to the conference and we turned in our final copies on time, so I expect it will amount to my first published paper, and also my first time as first author on a paper. I also have another paper in the pipeline (third or fourth author on that one) which will make my CV look like I’m actually a graduate student and not just some guy with a BS that has taken grad classes.

Stupid Advertising

There seems to be an advertising campaign lately which just boggles my mind. There are trains and busses and billboards which tout: Fresh Air! Coming soon to select bars and restaurants!. It is obvious what this ad campaign is for - there was recently a new bill which passed in both Ramses and Hennepin county which bans smoking from all bars and restaurants in the counties. I’m not opposed to this kind of a law, but what bothers me is that someone (and probably a group of someones) decided that there needed to be an advertising campaign for it. It’s a law. Laws should be enforced, not advertised. You don’t see billboards all around saying Now in stores: Paying for goods and services! because it’s a law. Di supposed that the advertising campaign was in order to alleviate businesses’ concerns about the new ban. I don’t think that explains the need myself - it’s not like people are going to stop going out to eat downtown because of it.