Aaaaalmost there!

2010-12-01Uncategorized Standard

It’s December!!  Yikes!!  But also Yay because teaching for this semester is all but over.  My last ‘lecture’ was on Monday (it was an unprepared review) and that’s also when I gave the last homeworks back.  This week I need to write a final for December 7th, and then a sick-test for December 20th or 21st for those that self-report being sick on the 7th.  For some reason I don’t recall there being sick-tests at Stanford, but perhaps I’m mistaken.

There are lots of other thing in the never-ending pipeline.  Three days after the final I will be taking off to California to attend the AGU conference in San Francisco, meet friends, and shop for Christmas presents – not necessarily in that order.  I will be returning a week later.  (If people want to have company during that week, I’m sure Finnur wouldn’t mind not having to cook dinner! :))

I also have to figure out what the %#$”& I will be teaching in my ‘Antennas and Wave Propagation’ course in the new year – and from which book.  It been taught for 13 years by a radio amateur, so that’s where the emphasis has been.  Now, I’m not a radio amateur, and I have never designed an antenna for realz (attempted to simulate one in Matlab for a final project in grad school, but misunderstood the directions, so it was a somewhat epic fail), so this course should be somewhat, erm, colorful.  But I’m giving it a go, and expecting to learn lots in the process.  As it turns out, I still find learning fun!

Health-wise we’ve mostly stayed upright, although Finnur got zapped by a random stray bug on the day we celebrated Thanksgiving (New Out-of-Order Blog Entry!!) and Anna collapsed into the sofa after returning from school today and fell asleep.  She will almost certainly not be going to school tomorrow.  Also, daycare just reported a case of scarlet fever… oh fun!

Anyway, it’s time for bed.  Oh, but also scroll down for a second new-out-of-order entry: Jumping Kids.

COMMENTS

Rajan P. Parrikar

Re. Antennas & Wave Propagation –

I would go with Jordan and Balmain, although John Kraus’ “Antennas” classic remains a favourite.

Hrefna

It looks like Jordan and Balmain are out of print, and Stutzman and Thiele have also disappeared. I’ve got my hands on Kraus, Balanis, and Saunders (wireless apps), and a handful of general purpose EM books. The main worry with both Kraus and Balanis is that the books are about 1000 pages long each. That’s scary!