Saket Vora

As some of you know, Stanford operates on a quarter system, not a semester one like NC State did. Fall quarter is late September to mid December, Winter quarter is January to late March, and Spring quarter is April to mid June. As a result, classes move faster and there is what I like to call the step function, that time where it feels that everything kicks into high gear and stays that way until the end of the quarter.

In EE 414, we are starting the hardest lab, which will last two weeks. How hard? Written in the lab guide: “Section 11.3: It doesn’t work; now what do I do (after weeping uncontrollably)”. Our goal is to construct a “frequency synthesizer-based local oscillator”, which is a voltage controlled oscillator and a phased locked loop.

In EE 192C, we are doing our midterm software design project, due May 15th. I’ll be writing code that interfaces with a GPS receiver and Bikiran is handling interfacing with a memory card.

So yeah. Busy two weeks, but it’ll all good.

Tomorrow I’m gonna try to get tickets for the Salman Rushdie talk in the evening. In finance class we’re doing term sheet negotiations — my study group is playing the management team and another group is the VC. Should be fun.

Jordan’s parents and sister were in town and they kindly took me out to dinner on Friday. I had a wonderful time and it was nice to finally meet them. Maybe Jordan will stay out here for the summer too, not too sure. The law students have finished and there is a concentration of them in Studio 1, where Nader is a RA. Like the fat cats they like to think they are (sorry Win, hehe) , they were leaving a lot of things behind and I was able to nab an Ikea rolling cabinet thing, a plant, a vase, and some other things. Suckers.

Naman introduced me to Andrew McKee and I had coffee with him Saturday morning. Really cool guy — B.S. in biomedical engineering from Duke, started Duke Medical School, took a leave of absence to be a saxophonist and composer, then finished his degree, worked at McKinsey for a while and is now in the business ops & strategy group at Google. We talked about his time at McKinsey, how we both know of Naman (Andrew is meeting him in a couple of weeks), and about the field of energy. He and his wife just got an apartment up in the City.

I renewed my housing for next year — will be in the same room. I like living here. The NC primaries are Tuesday and you all know who I’ll be rooting for.