CRA-W DMP Program Summer 2004

Journal
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Week 5

Andy visited this weekend! Woohoo! More about that later :) At work this week I continued implementing the backend. Julia and I met with Chendi, a student who had previously implemented a PowerPC backend, on Wednesday and stepped through a few programs to figure everything out. I got the program outputting actual instructions and hopefully by the end of next week it will be able to produce small programs containing integer operations that actually run. I began to realize that producing code for both linux and os x would be harder than expected, so I'm going to concentrate on linux and only worry about os x once linux is fully functional. I did some reading on the possible thesis topic Mike suggested last week and found that my compilers teacher, Jack Davidson, had actually written a few papers on loop unrolling. I read his papers and a few others on profile-guided optimizations and loop unrolling and it looks like the idea has promise.

Andy arrived in Austin on Thursday! I got a white Dodge Neon rental car and I picked him up at the airport at about 3pm. I took him to the East Side Cafe for lunch, then took him to ACES to meet some of my co-workers. I took him to a cha cha lesson with the Ballroom Dance Club at UT (Andy loves to cha cha). Then we relaxed Thursday night, and got a late night snack at the Magnolia Cafe, followed by a scenic drive around Texas hill country. On Friday morning Andy and I went to O's, the campus cafe, for breakfast, stopped by ACES, and then went to the gym for some racquetball. I showed him the awesome tournament court that's out in the middle of the gym with stands around it. Afterwards we went to Best Buy and I bought a digital camera!!! I immediately began taking tons of pictures with it. Look here to see all of the pictures! After I got my camera we grabbed lunch at Quiznos, and then headed out to Johnson City to see the Exotic Resort Zoo:

Andy surrounded by creatures at the Exotic Resort Zoo. He insists that the goats are eating his shirt in this picture.

Afterwards, we drove to the Oasis restaurant. We got there a bit early to see the sunset, so we went down to the bar and had drinks for an hour or so, then watched the sunset, and then had an awesome dinner with a gorgeous view of Lake Travis.

Andy and I at the Oasis, the Sunset Capital of Texas. This was before we learned to turn the camera's flash on.

Saturday morning Andy and I woke up and went for a walk around Town Lake. Andy decided he wanted to go kayaking so we rented a boat and I got a horrible sun burn, but it was awesome anyways. Afterwards we took a 4 mile walk around Town Lake and then went to Stubb's for some Texas Barbeque for lunch.

This is the position in which I spent most of the 2 mile kayaking trip. Andy got a good work out, and I got a good sunburn :)

Later that afternoon we went to Runtex to buy me some new running shoes, and then that evening we went downtown to eat at McCormick & Schmick, an AMAZINGly good seafood place in the bottom of the tall new funny-looking building downtown. I had the rainbow trout and it was just about the best thing I ever tasted. Afterwards we wandered around Town Lake to see the view at night. That evening we went to Mozart's, an adorable little coffee house on Lake Austin with outdoor seating on decks overlooking the lake.

Sunday afternoon I took Andy to lunch at Ski Shores Waterfront Cafe, which is an awesome little restaurant right on Lake Travis. Afterwards, we went to Hamilton Pool. That evening, we went to a party at Allen's house. The concept of the party was that everyone had to bring a 6-pack (typically of beer), and no two people could bring the same 6-pack. The party was a lot of fun, and afterwards we went to see the fireworks and then to Chris's place for some swimming and hot tubbing. Afterwards, we were hungry so we stopped for a late-night snack at Kerbey Lane, a classic Austin 24-hour diner down the street from me. I had the "short stack" of pancakes which in Kerbey Lane world means two giant pancakes each much larger than your head. Andy had migas and french toast, which much to our surprised was two entire plates full of food. We went home very full and crashed at 3am with the alarm set for three hours later.

Andy and I at Ski Shores Waterfront Cafe. This experience made Andy decide that he wants a boat.

Andy and I in front of the falls at Hamilton Pool :)

Kartik, Mike, Doug, Jon, me, Walter, Andy, and JP at Allen's house for the 4th of July Big Beverage Potluck Bash.

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