9/8/04

       Dr. Patt,
       This is ************ again,

Again! Lucky me.

       Just had two quick questions for you. The first was in
       regards to what you said last week, about us being allowed to choose
       whatever ECE account name we want. I registered today, and was told
       (very rudely, too) that this is not the case, and cannot choose my
       name, nor change it. I was just wondering if there was a
       miscommunication, or if I simply had two proctors whom didn't want to
       do the extra work?

So, let me say a few things about this. First, my feeling has always been that every student should be able to pick his own user id, as long as it is not something offensive. I am told that the LRC staff agrees with me in principle, but they have so much other work to do right now that has to take precedence over user ids, that they don't have time to accomodate you all. They are looking toward the time when indeed, every user (student, professor, secretary, whatever) can choose his/her own user id. ...only, they cannot handle the number of changes right now.

Having said that, if some of you really, really can't wait, please see me personally, and I will see if I can help.

Second, there is no excuse for rudeness. So, if someone "very rudely" told you "no," then I would like to know who it was. I think his/her boss might like to have a talk with him/her. The staff of LRC considers themselves a service organization that has a pretty intimidating responsibility to keep our computers up, reliable, and accessible to all of us. They fundamentally try to be helpful, and if someone on their staff has a different idea, then the LRC administration would like to know it.

       Secondly, in the homework that is due tomorrow, my group and
       I have been trying to get the problem with the add/multiply boxes
       involving A^2+2AB+B^2 to work with only one of each type of box. We
       have drawn the conclusion that unless you can have an add box output
       twice, this is not possible, could you shed any light on this?

Good conclusion! ...and in fact, we have a name for it: fan out. When the output of a box is connected to the inputs of n subsequent boxes, we refer to this as a fan out of n. In the real world, many circuits are restricted to a fan out of four, but that is a subject for courses that will come after 306.

       Thanks,
       << name withheld to protect the one they picked on >>
       EE306

       P.S. I hope you enjoyed the long weekend.

Aha! The hope. Nope, I spent the whole weekend in ENS working on 306 stuff.

See you in class.

Yale Patt