I'm tired of being told that I lack ambition because I don't work 13 hours a day and that I work too hard because work 12.

I'm moving to the Bay Area for the summer again. My car is packed to the roof with random stuff, and I have a U-Haul with the basic furniture. In a few hours, I'll be on the road for another summer in the Silicon Valley. For all the time that I've spent in the Bay Area, I feel that I'm walking into the unknown again. I'll be living alone for the first time in my life. I don't know how I'll fit in, what I'll do, and what my identity will be outside of "engineer" (which, in the Bay Area, doesn't make me very distinct). In leaving Davis for a few months, I'm leaving a place that I really do feel like is home. My work is here, my friends are here, my identity is here. I'm comfortable with the routine.
Maybe it's just me getting older, but every time I do one of these transitions, I get more and more contemplative. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? How have I changed since the last time I changed my life? What have I done with the time that I've spent here? And where is this all going? At best, I feel like I'm running the rat race. Get job, get stuff, get married, get kids, get .... I'm not sure what the next thing is, but I'm sure there's something. I don't really have a plan for all of this. I seem to constantly get lucky and fall into the next thing. There really is no plan, just a series of accidents.
The last time I moved down to the Bay Area, I was looking forward to finding my place in world outside of Davis and graduate school. What am I doing? And what life after graduate school am I working towards? I ended that summer more confused than I started, realizing that I seeing everybody else's life made me more confused than I started out. Why is everybody so happy with their lives while I'm so confused? Why does everybody seem so good at becoming an adult, while I'm still trying to figure out what the hell that means? Why does everybody spend so much of their free time drunk? Despite all of my wishing, I don't seem to arrive at the answers quick as easily as everybody else does.
So I'm on to my next accident, another software internship in the Bay Area. I think that I'll do a pretty good job while down there - I'm just not quite sure at what.

I wasn't never talented when it came to a riding a bicycle. I got a lot better as time went on and I put a lot of work into being a better rider, but those first few years were really rough. My first racing year, I was the worst male rider in the western conference. Literally. I finished dead last in the lower category in the conference in every race except for one. And in that one race, I only finished higher up because most of the people who were originally ahead of me got lost. I was terrible. I didn't stop absolutely sucking until my 5th season.
However, I never gave up. Each season, with wide eyes and great ambition, I got on my bike and said, "This is the year I will stop sucking." To this day I often wonder why I didn't quit earlier. I think that I was always convinced that I was just a lot closer to not sucking than I really was. Whatever the reason is, my usual explanation is that I was too stupid to know that I sucked.
All of this come up today because I'm playing on an intermural soccer team. Outside of the goalkeeping position, I suck. I can't settle passes and I don't have good control. I feel this great need to hide from the world and not let the world know that I suck. I wonder where that spirit that helped me endure all those years of sucking went, but I want it back. I should keep persevering in the face of sucking, I want to be too stupid to know I suck again.
I'm convinced that this is how most people get through life. The vast majority of people aren't very good, but plenty of them think they are spectacular. 80% of drivers believe that they are better than they are. The worst students in math believe that they are near the best. The most average looking girls believe that they are amazingly hot. When I was growing up in San Jose, I watched anybody who could figure out what a computer was make millions and believe that it was proof of their obvious brilliance.
Do we have to tell ourselves these lies to keep going? And as we get older and more experienced with how hard it is to be successful at anything, do the lies become harder to fabricate? I sure hope not, but I fully suspect that it is true. Can't I go back to the days where I was too stupid to know I suck?

The SENSYS deadline is in 3 1/2 weeks. I'm on the verge of running experiments and seeing if they give me any interesting results. By Monday, I'll have an idea if I've done anything useful. This is the scary part of research. I think this is what separates me from the standard engineers. I would like to think that I'm just smarter, but I disproved that years ago. Alas, it's this scary time when we try to figure out if all of the theoretical stuff that we've come up with actually does anything to justify my existence that separates the researchers from the standard engineers. We'll see what happens on Monday.

Yesterday was the last day of the Amgen Tour of California. It was a messy one. It rained almost every day, and the riders suffered through 7 hours in freezing rain on Thursday. I really do applaud their professionalism. The self preservation part of most of them was telling them to quit. However, they understood the importance of this race to cycling, so they toughed it out to put on the show.
I was supposed to fly home two hours ago, but I'm still sitting in LAX because I volunteered to get bumped off my scheduled flight in exchange for a travel voucher. I now have enough free flying money stored up to visit just about anywhere in the continental United States (and back) for free. So, I would like to ask my readers (all four of you), where should I go? Betsy and Chris, visiting you two is definitely high up on the list. However, there are also a lot of places in this country that I haven't seen and other people that I haven't visited. So, the suggestion box is now open.

"Getting rich is life's big booby prize. People who aren't happy want to be rich."

- Jim Koch, Brewmaster and Founder of the Samuel Adams Beer

Beauty pageants aren't usually anywhere on my radar. However, while in the Apple store a few weeks ago, the Miss Teen USA pageant came to my notice. Of course, I'm talking about Miss Teen South Carolina USA's giant moment of collapse on national television. To promote Apple TV's partnership with Youtube, the store was featuring her moment in the spotlight.
Honestly, I feel bad for Miss Teen South Carolina USA. A lot of people have been ripping into her for being a stupid beauty queen (and running and re-running aforementioned video to prove their point). While I have no evidence as to whether she is intelligent  or not, I can say that everybody screw up at some point in their lives. Statistics say that there is some probability that somebody will screw up on the biggest stage possible. Take Bill Bruckner. He watched a slow-rolling grounder roll through his legs during the 1985 World Series and then watched the Miracle Mets finish off the beleaguered Red Sox. He's still a Hall-of-Fame quality ball player, but just happened to screw up on the biggest stage possible. Of course, there is always the person who forgets the words to the national anthem while signing at the biggest sporting even that they will ever be at. And there was that time I screwed up the lyrics to "Mary Had a Little Lamb" is a sing off.
So I simply ask that everybody give this poor young woman a break. She screwed up. It happens. We all do it.

Besides, isn't this why we have Britneys Spears?

I love traveling. When I'm down and blue, I'll spend hours trolling on the travel websites planning trips that I can't afford. Boston, Austin, Seattle, Toronto, London, Amman ... if I could spend my time hitchhiking across the world, I would. I would meet so many interesting people. My best moment from traveling would be on the way to Regan National Airport in Washington, DC. I stopped by a mall food court to eat lunch and sat down with a random guy. He was a financial analyst for the World Bank. I asked him all about his job, his work, his travel, his education, and all about his amazing life traveling the world trying to solve some of the world's most challenging political and economic problems. I was completely enthralled with learning about such a different life. I think being on vacation allows me to be relaxed enough to stop and listen to other people, since I'm not necessarily under any pressure to do anything myself.
Anyways, I swore that after my summer internship, I would take some of that money and go somewhere. I put up a giant map on my cubical wall and had people vote. In the end, I picked New York City. So, from October 26-28, Jeff Wu invades New York City. All I have right now are plane tickets. Nothing else is set. I put out a call to all of you loyal readers to give me advice on where to sleep (not Central Park), what to see, and how to find some really neat places to eat. For all of you who have been to New York, I want all of your knowledge.
Thanks in advance.

Here's something I saw posted on a message board:

"I am an asian male. I can say that we have no hairstyle unless you want to look like an anime villain..."

I have just sent my qualifying exam proposal to my committee. Now I have to do is give the talk, answer questions, and not look like an idiot. I wonder if they will pass me if I only do two out of the three.