yay for fantastic days

i was up sooooooooo freakin early this morning, but all in all it went well.

the REU students were supposed to meet at 8am this morning for a field trip, and all but an apartment of 4 of them showed up on time. (those 4 got an email of "dude, you're required to attended scheduled events, you need to email me if you're not going to be there")

for those of us who went, our field trip to telcordia was pretty cool.

once we arrived, they fed us breakfast... then we listened to one of the VPs outline what telcordia is... basically if you've ever used a phone, they're behind what you're doing. they lay out the software that allows the different phone networks to connect... the software that allows caller ID on your cell phone... the software that puts GPS in cellphones... the software that allows you to hookup a new phoneline in less than a day instead of in a week or two... they make everyone play nice together and do a lot of cool research in the process :-)

after the VP was done, 3 different researchers told us about what they do... the first talked about the structure of the different applied research groups at telcordia, the 2nd about the importance of working out kinks with detailed digital simiulation (b/c cost of changing a product after it's implemented goes sky high, whereas it's easy to change things in the planning phase) and gave several computerized examples... the last guy talked about different networking models and current research on which ones work best for what information distribution systems.

after that, we got an hour long demo of some new software telcordia is working on called "sharenow". your TV can manage caller ID, as can your computer... and they showed the technology to forward calls from your office phone to your home and vice versa, notifying other phones, your IM, your computer, and other things at will in the process. the "sharenow" software allows you to have an "enhanced phone call", where say you want to ask someone for directions while you're at your computer... then when you connect through "sharenow", the person you're on the phone with can pull up a map on your screen and highlight as they talk... or they can click around on your computer and help you install things too. their TV caller ID even uses gps-like units in cellphones to tell you where someone is located and how fast they're moving... it was pretty cool (of course you set permissions for who can locate you since you obviously don't want anyone in the world to be able to track you like that).

after the demo, they gave us lunch, and then we headed our merry way back to campus where i was flooded with lots of exciting questions. 3 hours later, i'm happily at home, getting ready to go on a walk (i can't believe it's 4pm and only 72 degrees outside!)... scott, jared, and eric promised to entertain me and feed me cake tonight since tomorrow eric flies to alaska for 3 weeks and scott will be in NYC for something else... this works just fine by me :-)

last full day of being 23... ta da :-P

later dudes