Seahawks, EE Lab
January 31st, 2006 by Brian
Seahawks Banner in Allen Center
I started on EE lab 3 today, which was going well enough until the TA came around to collect our report for Lab 2. Both my partner and I were under the impression that Lab 2 was due on Friday, not today. That’s what happens when things don’t go according to schedule, things get shuffled around, and the new due dates never get posted anywhere. Turns out that the lab was due at the end of the period today.
It wasn’t a big deal since we were nearly finished anyway. We spent about fifteen minutes answering the last two questions and I typeset the LaTeX file. Unfortunately, everything is on my PowerBook, for which the only configured printer is in my dorm room. There’s a laser printer in the EE lab, for which they want 5¢ a page, and I couldn’t connect to the network to transfer it there, since I’m a CSE student and don’t have an EE login. So, I zip over to the CSE side where my login works and the printing is free. Of course, the labs are nearly full, so the only computer I can find is running Windows. I use the Linux workstations more or less exclusively, so it had been some time since I had logged into the Windows server. And of course, what a perfect opportunity for Murphy’s Law to strike. My Windows password had expired, and it wanted me to come up with a new one before letting me log in.
The CSE servers are administered by competent people who understand the value of a secure password. For the end user, that means that a secure password is required. That meant coming up with something on the spot longer than 8 characters, with both upper and lower case, with at least one number and one non-alphanumeric character. Preferably something I could remember. That took me a few minutes.
Murphy’s Law strikes again. I’ve never printed from the Windows machines before, so the printer’s not configured. For anyone who’s tried configuring a network printer on Windows before, you should need no further explanation as to why that’s a big problem. If you never tried, trust me when I say it’s like getting a babel fish from the machine into your ear in the text adventure version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
At least I had gotten the PDF transferred from my PowerBook to the network, so I can go back to the EE lab, call it up there, and print it for 5¢ a page. So, we try doing that. Shouldn’t be all that difficult, right?
After getting some printer pages credited to my lab partner’s account, we submit the job. Nothing happens. We call over the lab monitor, who cancels the job and sends it again (I would have tried that, but I wasn’t sure whether the printer debits from one’s account when the job is submitted, or if it waits for the pages to come out, and I didn’t want to get charged twice.) The printer happily spits out the first five pages of the report, followed by a nice PostScript error message. Blah!
The TA mentions trying the printer upstairs, in EE371. We go back to the computer and try to select the 371 printer, but all we see is the 173 printer. We find the TA again and ask about it; turns out he meant we need to actually walk up the stairs to EE371, log into a computer there, and print. My lab partner goes off to do so, only to return with the first five pages again, followed by a PostScript error.
Fortunately, at that point, the TA agreed to accept an e-mailed PDF. Phew. Problem solved.
Hopefully we can get into the lab tomorrow to finish the part of this week’s lab we weren’t able to complete since we spent about an hour dealing with the above fiasco.
I must have inadvertently broken a mirror or something.
On an unrelated note, I’ve read that MATLAB does not run under Rosetta on the new Intel Macs. That’s troublesome. No word on Mathematica yet, though.