grad school: prelim results

I passed!

From, I don't know, 2pm until 16:30 Aimee (lert), Trevor, and I chatted nervously in the library. At 4:30pm we went upstairs to look for Kris (vyncentvega) and Matt (lowgee). We loitered about. We'd been told that results would be available "after 4:30pm on Friday." Notification comes in the form of a mysteriously-delivered envelope with a letter containing just a few sentences.

At 4 or something, we saw the faculty walking down the hallway, meaning their meeting was over, their meeting in which they discuss each one of us who took the exam and decide whether or not we should pass. Adrian (my advisor) saw us in the library and came and sat with us. "I don't write letters, but I'm happy," he said, offhandedly, before starting a discussion about a proposed light-on-light scattering experiment. Things boded well.

At 4:45pm we decided it would be alright to go down and check our mailboxes. Sure enough, there was a single thin envelope in each of our mailboxes.

Adrian went out and bought us champaign champagne.

projects: building a radio?

I'd like to build a radio. Perhaps several. AM then FM. Receiver. It's just something I'd like to learn more about, but also I feel ridiculous with a degree putatively in Electrical Engineering but without having ever constructed any radio device more complicated than a crystal set. It seems like there ought to be a nice book out there somewhere with progressively more sophisticated designs to play with?

One little idea I had was to try to build a clock would listen to and decode the time signals broadcast by NIST; those are on nice integer fixed frequencies, so maybe something simple (with a crystal oscillator) would work? ioerror, Google came up with a link to some neat pictures on your flickr account in response to the query, "homemade fm radio receiver". What's the story behind this nifty little contraption?

adventures: upstate?

I'm looking for somewhere neat for an overnight trip, for tomorrow, in upstate new york, or maybe points south, possibly even in northern PA. Anyone know of any neat hostels, maybe low-key b&b's, anything neat to see? [I wish this state had hot springs.]