Hi everybody, here I come again – and again after too much time!

The project is going really well – I don’t sleep much anymore, but that’s ok. Frank has been great at involving me – he says he hates having interns waste company time, but really he’s a big softy. I really feel confident about the success of this thing. Unfortunately, I can’t talk to much about it due to professional privacy etc., but after our last Friday meeting the lawyers said that it would be ok to talk about our approaches to the multicast problem – in fact, as all the appropriate patents are in order – it is free publicity! You remember that I said the Internet is not currently designed to support multicast. Well, respecting the rules about disclosing private company information – this is what we’ve been doing.

The keyword is “network overlaying”, that consists of building a virtual multicast network on top of the physical unicast one. We envision three main scenarios.

The first, is joining multicast backbones that have been already created by third parties around the world. The most popular one is called MBone.
The second one is creating our own multicast backbone, by placing multicast routers in strategic positions in order to minimize the need for packet duplication.
The third one, which is the most challenging and, in our opinion, the most promising, consists of creating an application-level overlay which involves our users (that are the listener of the web radio) in the packet distribution effort. As Frank keeps telling me “we have to think outside the box!”.
We ran experiments to evaluate, by means of prototypes, the feasibility of all the three approaches. It will be time before we’re ready to talk about the results of these evaluations and the development of our specific approach.

In fact, Frank keeps joking with me that he’s going to make me give the final presentation about our project to the board of directors. He’s a funny guy! The last presentation was ok, but it was just to the department heads, and I knew some of them. At least the ones working with research and development. I don’t think I want to stand up in front of the men with the expensive ties and pretend to be an expert on this. Again – Frank is a funny guy.

Christmas made me realise that I haven’t developed much of a social life here – that is, everything outside of work I do with work people. It’s not like being a student, that’s for sure! I’ve been so busy that I never really thought about it – but I hang out with Frank and the guys in our office – and that’s it! Maybe this weekend will be time to go out “on the town”. Heh heh. Anyway – enough about my personal life in public! Like the project – disclosure must be limited in the early stages of development! Ha ha! Are any of you doing any better than me?

Today’s expression is “all work and no play makes Bob a dull boy” – “dull” means boring or uninteresting.

I should develop a vice (a bad habit).

Did I mention – “to be bushed”?

Wow – the holidays have caught up with me! I’m not sleeping much any more as the relaxation over the holidays was so total that I think my blood stopped circulating! I have to say, it was really nice to speak Italian again. I hadn’t noticed how much energy it takes to use a foreign language day after day. It’s great, and you don’t feel strange about it, or even think about it – until you go back to your mother tongue. At least that was my experience with my family here. It was like having the first night’s sleep after running a marathon. Now it’s the morning after! Frank told me to take vitamin D supplements – as the winter can be long and you don’t get enough sun (which helps the body produce vitamin D – he says), particularly in our field as we’re indoors all the time. It’s actually kind of interesting, my mum (mom in the US) said that’s true – that when you’re vitamin D level drops you can feel depressed or “run down” (low energy and interest level) – causing “cabin fever”, where you feel “stir crazy” – meaning that you feel that you are going nuts from being inside all the time, but don’t have much energy to do anything that is available to you – I think. I’m still not sure how this combines with depression, but I don’t think I’m going to find out anyway. I can’t afford that (meaning I can’t allow that to happen)! I’m looking at the second half of this experience now, and I want to keep my energy up until the end (then a collapse this summer?!?). Anyway – I’ll give it a try. I don’t know how much I should take, so I’ll ask the pharmacist. It’s funny, here it’s also called “the drug store” – the first time I went I asked for a kilo of heroin – but they didn’t think it was funny. Oh well, stupid foreigners – right? heh heh.
So, I think this general tiredness is like “vacation jet-lag” because I changed my daily routine from 380 to 110 volts and then back again in a relatively short period of time. We’ll see if the vitamin D helps. Crap – do I need to take up a sport? I hate sports!

Anyway – the expression for the day is “all hopped up” – meaning having an excessive amount of energy due to some form of chemical reaction in the body, often from ingesting some type of substance – LIKE VITAMIN D!!!

Welcome back to the work week everybody (even if it started last week – or doesn’t start for you for a while yet!)

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year everybody!!! I’m back at work, but I had a great holiday with my “folks” (parents – and my sister came too). They left yesterday from Chicago, and I took the day off to say goodbye at the airport. It was lots of fun having them here though. WE DID NOTHING!!! Watched movies, ate, walked around Chicago (which is a fascinating city – if COLD!!!) and generally relaxed. I’ll admit, it was more like a winter vacation than Christmas, because there wasn’t all the “hustle and bustle” (frenetic activity) of Christmas at home – family, house and cooking preparations etc. It was really relaxing, and that’s just what I needed.

I just thought I’d write to wish everyone a happy 2008! Talk to you soon!

Today’s expression is “to be bushed” = it means to be really tired (I spent yesterday evening getting back from Chicago, got in late, and up early for work AFTER THE HOLIDAYS!!!)