MarkPNeyer.com

Were I a nerd, I might posit a theory about the dread of returning to work on monday and its proportionality to the square of the fun you’ve had in the previous weekend. I’m not that nerdy, though, and the joke will go unmade except through oblique reference.

Now, the philosophers could have a field day with this one. Has the joke been made? In my mind the joke exists in a sort of ‘potential form’ but it hasn’t actually been formulated. When does the joke actually count as having been made? Once I write it down? Suppose some reader of this website (you poor bastard, you) constructs the joke on their own in their minds? Has the joke been made? Or has the reader merely made a joke, but not the one I was going to make?

I don’t think I’ll lose too much sleep over it…

Today I went to visit ‘Medtronic Corporation’. I used to work for a medical device manufacturer ‘AtriCure,’ and Medtronic is one of their competitors. I was hoping I could see their work on a device that was competing with the device made my the company for which I used to work; unfortunately, I didn’t realize how huge medtronic was. The device we saw was for deliving insulin to diabetics. Interesting if you are in the biomedical engineering field, I suppose, but I was not very interested. When you add in the facts that I did not eat much breakfast, am easily bored, and have gotten used to wearing sandals so my shoes were hurting my feet, I was glad when the tour was finally over.

I did have fun watching a machine packing devices into boxes for shipping. It was hypnotizing to watch the conveyor belt click along as little arms moved back and forth doing their thing. As my eyes were fixated on the rythmic metallic motion, I started to drift off into thought. Who was it that designed this device, what did it mean to them, what did it mean to the company, and what did it mean to the people who worked on it? To some, labor-saving devices which automate routine tasks such as assembly are a terrible thing because of their effect on “the working man.” The word ‘Saboteur’ comes froms from the french word ’sabot’ for shoe; during the industrial revolution, frenchmen angry about the prospect of losing their jobs to machines would throw their shoes in machinery to break them (the machines, not the shoes.) Did this box-folding device take some guy out of a job and cause his family to starve? Would that be worth if it medical devices could be made cheaper? Does it matter that the device was used in the manufacture of live-saving insulin pumps, instead of something “trival” like, say, boxes of thumbtacks?

My thoughts were interrupted as I noticed one box hadn’t been packed properly. Before it advanced to the next stage in the machine, a bored looking hispanic lady hopped up and hit a button, then grabbed the offending box from the line to fix it. I then looked up and realized that the tour had left me there, staring at the machine and pondering its place in the world.

We had dinner with Ran, our research advisor, and his family tonight. His boys were really cute. When I was younger, I looked forward to having children because I thought I’ d be a good father. When I was with Megan, I told myself I didn’t want to have children because she said she didn’t want them. “Nobody wants their kid to be a nerd,” she explained, as she told me she’d never want to have my children. It hurt. Having left that relationship, and experienced the joys of living life as it is meant to be lived, I have refound with joy my desire to have children and be a daddy some day; to explain the magical world in which we live, to tell them stories and show them things of beauty. To clean up their messes and have fights about bedtimes and deal with crying fits. In short, to experience those myriad simple joys which, although they can be frustrating at times, make life as beautiful as it is.

On the subject of simple joys, I have just finished “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” book four in the series. I immediately went to buy the next one. They are so very entertaining.

On wednesday we went to visit Qualcom, a communications company in San Diego. I liked what I saw there. It seemed like a place where I would fit in – full of intelligent people working on interesting problems, and the company was run by Engineers, not MBA’s, which is something I’ve been wary of after listening to my dad. I visited another company called ‘ViaStat’ which was in Carlsbad. I think maybe that’s north of San Diego? They gave a pretty boring tour, but after talking to some of the guys that worked there, it too sounded like somewhere I’d like to work.

I like the idea of having a job. I like the idea of working on projects and getting stuff done and being part of a team that accomplishes something. I enjoy the research I’m doing here, but I’m not really accountable to anyone, I don’t have to produce anything of value to anybody, and I still get paid the same no matter how much work I do. That bothers me. If I’m being paid by a company to develop an algorithm, that seems like honest work. If I’m being paid by the government to do research, it seems different; the job is so cushy and nice that it seems dishonest. I don’t really have to produce anything of value to anyone except for other academics. So I have the whole question of working in industry and working in academia. Academia sounds pretty awesome but I think I have ethical concerns with that sort of job.

I am still not 100% certain that I wish to attend graduate school, although I’m getting closer and closer to deciding that is the case. When I go, I need to decide what to study. I find complexity theory fascinating. I am fascinated by automatas and their computational power. So, one track is theory.

I am also very much interested in communication theory. Cryptography, error correcting codes, and information theory have cool math behind them, and I see connections between information theory and automata theory. It doesn’t hurt matters that there’s a ton of money to be made in this field.

Lastly, I’ve always loved video games and simulations. Apparently, physical simulations and computational geometry are a hot field and there’s good money to be made there, too.

Ran, our professor, told us to pursue what we love. I like all of those things, though. It’s cool to have many different interests, but eventually I need to pick one.