Pot Roast: An Experiment in Cooking

A few weeks back I got a free piece of beef from Camelot Keyholder training (Pavel didn't want to leave it in the fridge and didn't want to take it back with him). So I decided to (along with some of my free potatoes and free vegetable broth) to make a pot roast.

Earlier today I covered small potato pieces with salt, pepper, thyme, and oil to make roasted potatoes in the oven. I kept them in for about an hour and a half at 375. They were tender, perhaps too tender. Keeping them in the oven for half an hour less would have made them equally tasty.

For the pot roast, I did the following:

• Rubbed salt and pepper into the meat
• Stuck some baby carrots into slits in the meat
• Seared all the sides of the meat in a pan on medium heat to seal in the juices
• Put the meat on a cookie tray while using the pan I seared it in to bring vegetable broth, onion, salt, pepper, bay leaves, carrots, and potatoes to a simmer
• Put the meat back into the pan, cover with foil, and put it in the oven
• Keep it in the oven at 375 for 3.5 hours, checking on it approximately every hour
• Potentially uncover the meat and turn down the heat towards the end of the 3.5 hours (I turned the heat down to 250 for the last hour and a half - the important part is to keep the liquid at a simmer)

I started this process at about 8:30pm by rubbing the salt and pepper into the meat. I was originally going to use red wine for the liquid, but decided to use vegetable broth instead, and drink the wine with the pot roast instead. It will be done in about half an hour, after which I will try it, wrap it, and eat it for lunch tomorrow. 

Class differences in the tech world?

Do you think there is a class difference in the tech world? I most definitely do. For some reason there is a difference between people who work with their hands and people who work with their minds. For some reason people who work with their hands are considered "lower" in status - on a different field. There is no reason for this other than the fact that the conception that those who work with their hands are in some sense not "educated." The mark of modern society is that the educated do not have to use their hands to earn a living. It is considered a mark of the wealthy to avert having to use one's hands to be successful. However, oftentimes we are wrong.

Today at the office I was optimizing my code for Autotegrity when the electrician who was moving the lights from the path of the wall that was being installed in the office started talking to me. Everyone else in the office seemed to pretend that he wasn't in the room (and more or less ignored his presence). When he started talking to me, he walked over to my cube. My office mates just pretended he wasn't there. The electrician was about 40 years old and had frizzy hair akin to Einstein. He looked at me and commented on my looking eastern European. We then had a conversation for 15 minutes about Russia, during which he spoke to me in Russian for a bit. Turns out, not all manual laborers are uneducated.

Engineering on the spot

Having jobs and personal projects really makes me think about engineering and it's fundamentals. Lots of my projects (whether at work, for a class, in a UROP, etc.) are often "(I want to) do this thing. I have no idea where to start. Let me learn some cool thing to make it work."

In general, engineers should be flexible: they should not only know their tools and know what they don't know, they should be able to learn whatever it is they need to know for a specific project, perfect it, maximize it, and use it in further projects.

It's interesting how many projects or ideas come out of not knowing a certain tool for a task. It is often easier to be the first one to make a tool or resource than edit or implement a better version of one. I suspect the reason for this is that when you make a tool for the first time, no one has any standards for what it should do. You hack something together to make it work for you, and probably slightly modify it to work for others. Whereas in the other scenario, you are trying to improve on a tool: you are intimately familiar with the venue in which the tool is used, and you are either trying to optimize the stream of that venue or trying to expand it. In either case, it is harder to do so, because others who are using your tool have certain expectations or suggestions for it's use.

Speed sensors

GrampsVanTruk is doing rather poorly, I'm afraid. He is a 1990 Honda Accord (automatic transmission), but he's been going strong until a few weeks ago. The speedometer doesn't read any useful information - meaning it's completely not registering any speed. Online research tells us that the speed sensors need to be cleaned, but NOT the VSS (vehicle speed sensor). Rather, the NM (mainshaft) and NC (countershaft) speed sensors need to be cleaned. Last night we spend a few hours trying to find where these darn things are. We ended up taking out the air filter system and the battery to get at the innards of the car, but couldn't find anything that vaguely resembles the NM and NC speed sensors. The next plan of attack is to raise the car on two jacks, get under there, and take a look around.

EDM

EDM stands for so many things, but recently for me in the non-technical world it's been standing for Electronic Dance Music. This post is going to be a conglomeration of songs/artists that I like that I can reference for later use.

Lise - Arno Cost
Feel So Close - Calvin Harris
Strange Condition - Morgan Page
Bangduck - Afrojack
Hello - Martin Solveig & Dragonette
Hypnotize You - N.E.R.D. & Daft Punk
Daylight - Dumme Jungs
Finally - CeCe Peniston
Love is Gone in 5 Seconds - David Guetta
The Way We See the World - Afrojack
Isle of Capri - James Egbert

Google: Be Creative.

Now that I'm working for an online advertising company, I appreciate articles like this.

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576444363668512764.html?mod=WSJPRO_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Google getting into the advertising business is an interesting concept. Although I think the main point of the article is for businesses to be willing to take risks. It's all about the risks that businesses take. If businesses don't take risks, they can't gain anything. Sure, they can gain something, but they don't have a chance of doing great things. Because Sergey Brin had ideas and wasn't afraid to see them through, Google was able to become the internet's superpower in search. Although, to be fair, no one knew that drawing little pictures on Google's logo was a good idea. That's why for business, if you have the company and the intuition, good spirits, and sense of humor to put yourself into your company, you will do great things.

What Engineering is All About

To be perfectly honest, during my high school career I had no idea what engineering really was. It was only when I got to my second year at MIT that I started touching the surface of what engineering really entails. Especially this summer, working at my job, doing my UROP, being chair of ESP, working on my own side projects, has taught me more about what engineering really is than any class at MIT.

And I think it can be summed into one sentence: Know your tools and know when to use them.

Of course, there is way more to engineering than this, but the statement serves as a springboard for what it's all about. When you have a project or a goal in mind, the first thing you do is brainstorm ways to accomplish that goal or project. But you can't do that without knowing what tools are available to you. How can you even have clear project goals without knowing what can physically be done? More importantly, good engineers know when to save time by knowing what tools can accomplish their goals as fast as possible.

I mentioned physical possibilities - naturally, we all want to build flying carpets. Maybe this is possible (but I sure don't know anything about flight, so I can't say), but you need to know the basic science behind the physical world to design something for it. You should know that materials undergo deformation when under stress. Engineering it's about "ideal" cases - it's about how the ideal cases from first-year classes can be applied to the real world effectively.

One of the biggest flaws any engineer can have is not knowing when to say "I don't know." You not only risk humiliation when you mess something up, but you risk the integrity of your project. If you don't know something or are unsure, ask someone who does. Go look it up. No one will be judging you for not knowing - in fact, they will respect you for making sure you have your facts straight. How can you be an engineer without good science? You can't. Make sure you know the science - ask the questions when you have the chance.

In short: know your science, know your limits, and know when you don't know something. Happy Engineering!

Cloudy With a Chance of Hail: The Intro

So the story goes like this: Maddie, Russell, and I went on a road trip across the country, from Boston to Seattle. Why? It makes no sense - Maddie lives in Boston and is going to Africa this summer and I have a job in Boston that requires me to start the day after we get back. Well, because it's an awesome thing to do. At one of Erika's gatherings, Russell mentioned that his plans for driving across the country with Jeremy, a grad student, had fallen through because of some thesis issues. He wanted company on the trip and of course Maddie and I said yes, because we've been talking about driving across the country for some time now. I was surprised that Russell agreed, knowing that Maddie and I are crazy, but I'm glad he did.

The plan was to basically take I-90 all the way from Boston to Seattle, stopping in Niagara Falls, southern Illinois at Russell's uncle's, Chicago, The Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Glacier National Park, and finally Seattle. Then we were going to hitch a ride from another friend (either Christy or Lila) to get to Portland, spend an afternoon in Portland, and fly back to Boston. Of course, the trip turned out something like this instead (more elaboration to follow later):

5/24/2011 - Start at 9pm. Boston, MA -> Niagara Falls, NY
5/25/2011 - Niagara Falls, NY -> Plainfield, IL
5/26/2011 - Plainfield, IL -> The Badlands, SD
5/27/2011 - The Badlands, SD -> near Yellowstone, WY
5/28/2011 - near Yellowstone, WY -> Mt. Rainier, WA
5/29/2011 - Mt. Rainier, WA -> Seattle, WA (leave Russell here)
5/30/2011 - Seattle, WA -> Portland, OR
5/31/2011 - Portland, OR -> Boston, MA (red-eye)

That is the rough date breakdown, with more details and times to come. But we crossed 14 states: Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon. There were many more adventures within each of those states, with a total driving distance about 3600 miles: Google map.

Liberty Trail

For Winter School 2011 at MIT this winter, I went on a trip to Mount Liberty. Of the 10 people in the group (including 2 winter school leaders), there was 1 doctor, 2 EMTs, 2 WAFA, and 3 WFA. We were easily the trip with the most medical professionals on the trip that weekend.

The trip itself was fantastic - the morning started out cold. Somewhere around 5C. At the peak of Liberty, it was perhaps -10C. Thankfully, the weather was mostly clear. We could see about 270 degrees around the peak. We summited around 1:15pm and thought about doing Flume and coming back down the same trail. Instead, we decided to turn around.

But we were prepared. The ninja turtles that we were, we were each carrying a sled on our packs. Most of us had 2-foot-in-diameter hard green plastic sleds (courtesy of MITOC) that we sat down on as soon as we got below treeline again and slid down the Liberty Trail. It was the best trail to slide down on. I think I hit every single snowbank on my way down, but we easily slid 3 miles downhill on the sleds. No iceaxe was needed - just use your boots and hands!

The entire trip took about 7 hours go to ~8 miles, including spending some time at the summit and sledding down the whole way. I highly recommend this hike - bring at least 2.5 L of water for a winter hike!