Alex RasmussenI make things that do stuff with computers

Here’s something you never thought you’d be hearing from me: I’m working for Microsoft this summer.

Well, I’m working for Microsoft Research this summer, anyway.

Wait, put out those torches, put down the pitchforks and let me explain.

Some of you may know that I’ve been somewhat … critical … of Microsoft in the past. My anti-Microsoft sentiments have mellowed somewhat in recent years, however, The XBox 360 may have been to blame for that, and my hatred of Windows has ebbed since I realized that building operating systems is hard and keeping them working is even harder. Also, it’s no longer my job to fix PCs running Windows (thank goodness) so I haven’t seen the Windows installations of security-casual college students in a while.

So why MSR? Microsoft Research is where a lot of the interesting corporate systems research is happening right now, and the project I’ll be working on is really closely related to my current research. I’ll get to spend three months in the Seattle area during the three months that the area’s weather is really nice. Compared to what I would make at UCSD in three months it’s a huge chunk of cash. It’s a huge stack of win all the way around.

I had a problem with my speakers for a while, and it was getting on my nerves so much today that I finally sat down and tried to fix it. Essentially, when you adjusted the volume on these speakers, sound would cut in and out on the left speaker unless you had it set on just the right volume or you jiggled the knob for a few minutes. Even after lots of jiggling and turning, the knob was picky; every once in a while the left speaker would just  sort of stop working (and you’d wonder if you’d suddenly gone deaf in one ear).I had figured from the beginning that the problem was the knob itself. The knob is just a potentiometer (an electronic doodad that variably limits current flow based on the position of the knob), and sometimes the contact between parts of a potentiometer can get gunked up, causing the entire works to go crazy – at least that’s what the Internet tells me. Love the technical explicitness of that last paragraph? Blame the fact that I hated my electronics course in college.

Anyway, I called up my dad and asked for his advice on the subject. I was ready to rip the speaker open and spray lubricant on the knob, which may or may not have been a good idea. He suggested just turning the knob through its entire range of motion about 50 times. It turns out that worked like a charm – the speakers are as responsive as the day I bought them. Rocket scientist dad for the win!

On Wednesday, I met Don Knuth.

Now, to a lot of you this might not have been a big deal. To me, this is huge. Don Knuth wrote The Art of Computer Programming, one of the seminal texts on algorithms. He pioneered work in computational complexity. He wrote TeX, which was the basis upon which LaTeX was built. If you’ve read a research paper, chances are it was written using LaTeX. In my field, Don Knuth is kind of a big deal, one of the elder gods of computer science.

I have the luxury of working in a relatively new science. While (according to Wikipedia) machines used for calculation have been around since antiquity, the bulk of what’s considered CS wasn’t formalized until the 1940s. If you were a physicist living in around 1700, you could have met Isaac Newton. Since I’m a computer scientist living in 2007, I’m able to meet Don Knuth. It may sound a little grandious, but it’s the association that comes to mind.