Northern Belle

Imposter Panel: do YOU belong?

2010-10-01T15:17:00.000-04:00

Every year at GHC there is a panel called the Imposter Panel. I remember when I first came in 2006 it was in a medium sized room, and everyone crammed into the talk, stood in the hall, and not everyone could participate. It was so popular! The one in 2008 was similar, but of course each time there are new panelists and some new take on the problem of people feeling like imposters. This year they had moved the panel to the large ballroom where keynote speeches occur. It was great that everyone who wanted to attend could be there this time.

There was a very nice opening speech describing what going to GHC can mean to a student. I think the best point was saying that we need to support a woman who doesn't know yet that she's a computer scientist, or a woman who is the only one in her department.

During the panel the panelists all made very good points about how you can combat the feeling of being an imposter. For instance, the first speaker mentioned that you need to remember all of those great things you've succeeded at even if they are small, and you should really find a mentor and a sponsor whether or not they are the same person. Many of the panelists stressed the need for your network in different ways: they support you, you support them, and you learn from each other. Great advice both about imposter syndrome and overall.

Of course the most popular comment, and probably the most tweeted, is that "there is no recognition fairy!" This point is of course that you need to make it clear what you want and what you've done, because no one will do it for you! Definitely a recurring point here at GHC, and worth the repetition!

The panel was really great, which was evident by how many more questions were left at the end. So many people had great questions, the answers that really struck me are the following:

when you do screw up you really just have to eventually get over it. sure, you'll languish in it for awhile, but eventually you have to realize it's not the end of the world.
if you aren't taking risks and living outside of your comfort zone, you can't move on.
realize it's not just about you, and if it seems like everyone is smarter in class maybe they are just more driven to impress the professor (i.e. they memorize quotes from the textbook).

The last thing that really struck me about this year's Imposter Panel was that all of the panelists admitted that they felt like imposters from being on the panel! What a great example of how easy it is to feel like you aren't ready to do something when you really are the right person, especially when the audience can see that themselves.

I'm so glad the imposter panel has become such a main part of GHC, with no other competing sessions, and now a big enough room for everyone. Hopefully next time they'll do it again and maybe even find more ways to change it to keep it fresh as they have done so far!

Thriving in a multidisciplinary world: technical & communication skills are key

2010-09-30T10:38:00.000-04:00

So fun! We got to learn how to say good morning in Portuguese to start off the talk on Managing Scientific Data in a Multidisciplinary world by Claudia Bauzer Medeiros. Halfway through we also had a Tolkien reference! If 10AM seems early to you, this was a talk you could enjoy despite sleepiness.

As Claudia says, we are drowning in data and need to be able to help scientists in other areas cope with that problem. This includes models and visualization as well, which is right up my area of interest! Of course, all of this also means that you need not only technical skills but great communication skills, which seems to be the theme of the conference thus far.

Some of the points made really relates to a lot of what came up in the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems summer school this summer: you need to learn how to work with people from other disciplines and learn to speak their scientific language to have success. Of course, she calls this Data-driven science, which is different from what we call it in complex systems, but that's because she is coming from the data analysis side. I love that she had an image combining experiments, archives, literature, and simulations as facts used to help answer questions but that it's not enough: you also need data and information from collaborators not just your own set of it.

What I really love about all of this was the point that we are in an interdisciplinary world, and this should inform how we teach computer science. The implication, at least from my perspective, seems to be that the future is in collaboration between computer science and other fields and we need to prepare new computer scientists to succeed in this environment. One point here was how to get access to data as often people are not willing to give it up. Thus the Tolkien reference: the data is their "precious!"

I was not expecting, however, a section title slide called "Emotion." But the point was still a great one: you need to get people emotionally involved to have cooperation. This all ties back into the point of communication abilities being key for collaboration, as it is very difficult to have a successful conversation with someone if you can't understand their perspective on the subject.

CRA-W Workshops bring interesting perspectives on research

2010-09-29T16:21:00.000-04:00

The CRA-W tracks at GHC have been really interesting so far. I went to the first one of the Early Career Scientist track, where the top was how to start your own research lab. There was a speaker who works in industry research, a speaker from a research university, and a speaker from a primarily undergraduate institution. They really embrace active learning in the panel, as they gave us 2 minutes exercises throughout the panel: define what your agenda is, define your short medium and long-term goals, and define actions you can take toward those goals. What a great way to take teaching skills and bring them to a conference!

The second session I attended was in the grad track, with a focus on how to do networking. I really enjoyed the stories of how to meet the right people. The third session was also in the grad track, on how to do good research. I was actually surprised that much of this session was geared toward early grad students as opposed to those about to graduate. However, a lot of the advice seems to be relevant. For instance, the fact that you should find an interesting and exciting research area and try to figure out where the next big thing is can not only guide your thesis, but also your entire career. Also, you've got to enjoy what you're doing! I think that's always good advice to remind early researchers of from time to time.

Later in the session there was more discussion on how to do research after the phd. Did you know that HP Labs created color match technology where you can match your foundation color to your face by sending a photo through your mobile phone to an HP server? What an interesting project! The person who worked on this research is a networking researcher who built a collaborative team to solve the problem as presented by a cosmetics company. How unexpected, but a great example of how you can take your research knowledge and apply it in an interesting collaboration.

Ending thought: If you already know how to solve it, it's not research. You've got to be willing to go out there and claim you can solve a problem you aren't sure you can do! No one is perfect, but you'll have your expertise and should use it! "Confidence does not require perfection," always keep that in mind!
What advice do you have about how to choose your research topic after getting your phd?

Grace Hopper was also a funny lady

2010-09-28T11:23:00.002-04:00

Last week there was a lot of tweeting, e-mailing, and Facebooking (is that a verb?) about the Grace Hopper interview on Letterman back in the 80s. Apparently the video has been on YouTube for years, but it seems that at least a large number of us were unaware of it. She is quite the funny lady, and even brought a nanosecond to give Letterman. If you don't understand what that means, please watch the clip to hear the explanation straight from Grace Hopper! Since she is the namesake of the conference starting today, it seems only fitting to share the video with anyone who hasn't had the chance to watch it yet. Enjoy, and see you at the conference!

Poken: A paper-free business card, free at GHC!

2010-09-19T22:59:00.000-04:00

Wow. I mean, WOW.

I just learned about Poken, thanks to a tweet about it being at GHC this year. Not to sound like an advertisement, but it sounds really awesome! It's a paper-free business card that works with anyone else who also has a poken. You apparently touch the two together and it exchanges your contact information. When you set up your account you can choose what information to share and what social networking sites to include.

This sounds like a great idea for a conference, especially as they are giving them free to students and $15 for non-students. This sounds much better than the CONNECT project in 2008, where we had to find a CONNECT person to connect us. This year we'll be able to connect digitally without having to go somewhere else first! Conference organizers really seemed to have listened to our complaints and found a potentially perfect solution.

I think it's still worth bringing regular business cards though. Not everyone will have a poken, and not everyone will set it up either. But this product could really be revolutionary! It's much harder to lose digital information than a little piece of paper (at least, if it's stored somewhere easy to access and organized). It would be great if eventually everyone just had one and it could completely replace business cards. That could take awhile though. I'd like to say it would be more environmentally friendly, but the environmental cost of manufacturing the things may outweigh the paper savings (especially with recycled paper and properly harvested forests).

Well, I'm looking forward to trying out this new technology at GHC this year, and maybe it'll become mainstream enough that soon I can use it elsewhere too! I can't believe I never heard of it, but then again it looks like it may have only come out about a year ago, so I don't feel too bad. Hopefully I'll have a good experience to report!

GHC is just around the corner!

2010-09-18T11:20:00.003-04:00

Well, I'm definitely getting psyched about this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). I've been twice in the past: 2006 (San Diego, CA) and 2008 (Keystone, CO). Both times I met interesting women working in computer science, and I'm looking forward to re-connecting this year and making new acquaintances! Each year I've become progressively more involved. In 2006 I attended, and in 2008 I presented research in the ACM Poster Competition and was a note-taker. This year I am an official GHC Community Blogger (yay!), I'm on a panel called "Building Bridges and Breaking Barriers: Panel on Diversity and Inclusion in CS Education," and I'm presenting some of my dissertation research in the PhD Forum! There is so much to do before heading down to Atlanta (mostly related to making presentations), so time is really flying. At least I was awarded a scholarship again this year, so my main expenses are covered. That is definitely a stress reducer!

Did you know there are a lot of resources out there about GHC? Not only is there a wiki with notes from each year's sessions, but there is also a Facebook page to keep in touch with other attendees. If you can't attend this year, you can always follow updates on the GHC Blog or community Blog Roll, and Twitter feeds. They are definitely building a great community online in addition to in person.

I only wrote 6 ghc blog posts in 2008 but I'm anticipating more this year. You can also follow my tweets at @umasshokie. Just over a week until Atlanta!

I'm Back!

2010-09-13T11:33:00.000-04:00

Well, after a not-so-short hiatus from the Blogger world, I'm back! I decided I needed to take some time away from the blog to work on another time sensitive one, whose time has now passed. I'm looking forward to getting back to chronicling my graduate school adventures, as I am hoping I will graduate within the next year! I have a lot of exciting things happening this year, and I can't wait to write about them!

White Christmas

2010-01-03T16:47:00.003-05:00

I experienced my very first white Christmas this year! A week before Christmas a blizzard hit the east coast, including central Virginia. My parents' house had about a foot and a half of snow by the end of the storm. The last time I can remember us having that much snow there was over ten years ago, I think it might have been 1996? In that storm I remember us measuring out 21" and getting out of school for quite awhile. In this new storm, my sister and nieces were visiting and ended up staying until Christmas because the roads weren't clear enough to drive home (an hour away) until 2 days before Christmas! So instead of driving home and then back again the next day, they just stayed.

When we arrived a few days before the holiday, there was still about a foot on the ground. It wasn't until we left on New Year's Day that it was really disappearing and looking more like what we expect a VA winter to look like. I was joking to Tim when we arrived there that usually we get rain on Christmas instead of snow. Ironically, we had freezing rain which turned to rain on Christmas day. Good old Virginia.

In contrast, it has been snowing in MA most of the time since we returned Friday night. It looks like we will have quite the snowy winter this season. I don't expect VA to get MA-like snow again this season, but it looks like MA certainly isn't going to get any less than usual. At least we have the plows and infrastructure to deal with constant snow; I can't imagine being snowed in for more than a day at most!

Productive Semester

2009-12-14T17:21:00.002-05:00

Well, despite the lack of updating, this has been a rather successful semester. Everything for the TA is rounding out in the next week, I've submitted multiple papers, and I'm working on additional papers that will hopefully be finished before Christmas. I'm well organized for conference deadlines starting in January, and looking forward to a productive rest of the winter. I even start a new project soon, which will be a nice change from the norm.

The next week is going to be really busy, but what else is new?? The rest of December will be spent on visiting family, planning my wedding, and working on research. I'm really quite OK with that, and I'm looking forward to getting it all done so I can move on to the next to-do list!

How to Actually Help the Undergraduate Program

2009-10-22T13:35:00.003-04:00

It's interesting what types of cuts our university is willing to make in order to keep the quality of the undergraduate education. Obviously education is the goal, and when you have over 25K undergraduate students they are also the priority to some extent, even in a research focused university. However, one of the cuts the university makes in order to maintain the apparent quality of undergraduate education (i.e., keep from increasing tuition even more or cutting too many classes) is to decrease the funding given to departments for Teaching Assistantships for graduate students.

I can't imagine I'm the first person to consider that this can't possibly keep the same level of education, when students suddenly have fewer TA office hours to attend, and fewer TAs (and therefore less TA time) to answer e-mail or grade homeworks. This is why I say it is keeping an "apparent" quality of undergraduate education, even if it's not really keeping actual quality. As the sole TA for a class of 40+ students, I can say from just a few months of experience that this definitely impacts the undergraduate students. Luckily we were able to hire another graduate student as a grader for 10 hrs/wk, so I have more time to tend to the students' questions, design their homeworks, and put together the lectures I'll be teaching. But I still don't have enough hours in the week to help them. I can't imagine what TAs do when they aren't lucky enough to have just one other person to help with grading! Even spending the 20 hrs/wk I'm technically paid for isn't really enough. I enjoy what I'm doing, and don't want fewer responsibilities; but I'm really overworked, which is NOT good for my students!!

I wish this cycle was more apparent to the upper level "management" of the university. If you want good undergraduate education, pay your graduate students! We do more than research, and we're often a great resource for students. When there is 1 TA to 40 students, the number of minutes they can spend helping each student is minuscule. How does that keep the quality of undergraduate education?

New England Heating Oddities

2009-10-11T19:28:00.002-04:00

The process of heating your house is definitely different between New England and Virginia. This of course is not too surprising, given the colder climate up here. But what I really find interesting is the varied types of heating. In Virginia, almost everyone I knew either used electric heat or a wood stove. Up here in Massachusetts I've had electric heat, oil heat, and now gas heat.

Supposedly gas heat is really cheap, so I'm a bit excited to see if our energy bills go down now that we aren't on oil heat. Apparently it was very expensive a year or two ago though, so I have to cross my fingers that prices won't go up again. The gas heater is really weird though; there's a heater in our living room that is permanently attached, but still is essentially a piece of furniture on one wall. It's supposed to heat the entire house, but it seems like it will just make the living room too hot to bear, and the rest of the house not hot enough. We also have electric heating in the floors that we can turn on (a separate thermostat for each room!!), which is supposed to supplement the gas heat. It will probably take a few weeks of actual use to really find the right process for making this combination work well without a lot of wasted energy. So far the house seems to keep rather warm (thank you, south facing windows and brick exterior!), so I'm hopeful that we won't need to use as much heat as we needed to keep the old rickety house warm. But the idea of having this big heater running while we're not home is not so appealing.

The other confusing part of the gas heat is that there is no real thermostat on it. we can't, say, set the temperature to "60" and then just let it decide to run. You set it on a scale of "low" to "high" and as far as I can tell it continuously runs at whatever point it's put at. The electric heat has actual thermostats, but would require setting them in every room, and is supposedly more expensive to use than the gas heat. I hope we are able to figure out the right algorithm for making this all work out correctly!

This is all on my mind because tonight is our first night it will be below freezing, so I will probably have to turn the heat on. I'm hoping to figure out a way to just keep it around 60 to 65 though!

Craftiness

2009-10-11T18:05:00.004-04:00

I enjoy a wide range of hobbies, which can be very difficult sometimes with how much time I spend on work. It also doesn't help that I spend lots of free time with friends! Not that I'm complaining about that!

So, often my crafts go untouched for too long, and then suddenly I get inspired to work on them again and get tons done very quickly (and then don't touch it again for many many months). This has been happening as of late: I haven't worked on my scrapbooks since March or April, the cross-stitch I was planning to start in February didn't even get purchased until July (or was it August?), and the yarn box hasn't been touched since the main parts were finished in April or May. As you can see, the summer was not very productive on the hobby side of things; not only did we have softball games and a million weddings to take our time, I also had my thesis proposal.

Now, however, I have finally started crafting again! It's very nice to again make something without the use of a computer. I'd say it helps my eyes, but I think starting at small boxes and stitching on them isn't so eye-strain-free. The exciting thing though is that I've stitched at least an hour every day for the past week, and I'm making OK progress! I'm not sure I can keep up the pace of having an hour every night, but most nights I need an hour to myself which ends up involving the TV, so I am hopeful it will work out since cross-stitch and TV watching work well as a multi-tasking duo. The goal is to finish before Christmas (this is a strict deadline, actually), since it will be a Christmas present.

Some of you may remember the cross-stitch I was working on 2 years ago for my first niece Evelyn, pictured above. I didn't completely finish it before Christmas, but gave it as a gift anyway and then took it back to finish it before I had to head back to New England. This year, however, I plan to have my newest niece's cross-stitch finished before then! The first cross-stitch was top secret so I didn't mention it much here, but since I already started the trend, I don't think I can really make the second one a surprise to any adult in the family...so I think I'm free to blog away!

Politeness or Professionalism Classes: Required?

2009-10-09T17:00:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm actively involved in undergraduate courses, I've noticed a disturbing trend among students: unprofessional e-mails, inability to remember deadlines, not paying attention in class, and a lack of time management. Even graduate students have been prone to another problem: inappropriate types of question asking during presentations and class (the overbearing, you're wrong and I'm right, type of "question" that is really a statement and is usually incorrect).

I feel that college is the best place to either learn about professional and appropriate behavior or to improve one's behavior even more, so that upon graduation it will possible to interact correctly in any work environment including graduate school. So why do we not require students to take a professionalism class? I was lucky in that my university (Virginia Tech) required computer science students to take a professionalism seminar their junior or senior year, but I have since discovered that is not normal. We not only discussed and practiced interactions and professional writing, but also had panels related to ethics and the social impact of computing. I don't think this class was done perfectly (for one thing, anyone who did internships could have used it much earlier in the curriculum), but at least it was there to prepare students. Other computer science departments should really consider this type of class as well!

We do have professionalism seminars that happen a few times a semester at my current university, but they only cover a few topics, are the same every year, and are more geared toward applications and research methods for graduate students. This is great, but the undergraduates really need more guidance!

Teaching Assistant Life

2009-10-01T11:14:00.004-04:00

So, I'm finally living the life of a graduate teaching assistant. I was a teaching assistant as an undergraduate, but had not yet been one as a grad student. It's actually great, because my responsibilities are much higher level than they were as an undergraduate.

It could have been a horrible TA semester though; there are 42 people in the class and I'm the only TA. Can you imagine the grading? I can, since I graded as an undergraduate. But as an undergraduate we had multiple people grading for that same size class! It would have been horrible. Luckily, another graduate student is getting paid to grade 10 hrs/wk, so I have little to no grading to do.

That means I have more time for the more interesting aspects of being a TA! I am creating the homeworks, I'll create the midterm, and I might even create the final. I also had to create the answer keys, which were a decent amount of work themselves, but at least mostly done in the creation of the homework (I don't want to give impossible problems!). I'm also giving multiple lectures, with the first one being next week. Unfortunately that lecture is on a topic I'm not particularly comfortable with, but I know I can ramp up in time to teach it. The series of lectures I'm giving later in the semester will at least be things I know relatively well already.

Happily, I'm getting lots of great experience this semester. Sadly, it is time consuming even when I'm not doing the 20 hrs/wk I'm paid for! Just a little bit of a peek into the life of faculty, I think.

Thesis Proposals

2009-09-24T11:47:00.001-04:00

Well, a few weeks ago I passed my thesis proposal. For our proposals we have a 1 hour talk that is open to the public, the audience can ask questions, and then after the audience Q&A only the committee members and the student stay in the room. They then discuss the work, what they think of the proposed work, etc. Then the student is kicked out of the room while the committee discusses the work further, then the student is let back in to be told that they passed and what the committee wants to see for the thesis to be considered complete.

I was actually nervous, even though I essentially knew I'd pass. I think many of my practice talks went much better than the real one, but everyone said it went well and that they were intrigued by my work. Our department chair actually stopped by my cube last week to ask a question, give a suggestion, and say he was really interested in what I was doing. So it seems to have gone well! Also, multiple students have stopped me to talk about it and how it might apply to other fields, so I'm feeling better and better about it!

Now is the crazy part: all I have left to do is finish it! My goal is to be done in May 2011, although I hope to finish most of the main research before next fall so that I'll be ready to start sending out applications. How exciting!

Obama Fencing!

2009-09-18T11:01:00.004-04:00

This is so cool! Apparently two Olympic fencers were at the White House on September 17th, and they showed the President some fencing moves! The best part is they were saberists!! I'm so jealous. Can you imagine both being an Olympic saber fencer AND getting to meet President Obama?? Hopefully Tim Morehouse is right, and this might help encourage people to start with the sport who have never considered it before, or might help encourage areas without fencing lessons to find instructors. It's a lot of fun, but so many people never even try it or know if there are lessons near them!

One thing I think is pretty funny though is that they were wearing their lames and other electric fencing gear, even though they weren't fencing electric! I guess non-fencers would be confused by a saberist not in full saber gear, but it's still amusing. At least they don't appear to be wearing wires...

So Broke!

2009-09-18T10:42:00.002-04:00

Wow, having a fellowship can really work out in your favor! Although I knew that, I'm really feeling the effects right now. The past three years I was paid via a fellowship. Now that the fellowship has run out, I am a TA for my department. I make $600 less a month now! That is really going to make a difference in my budget. Sure, I saved money over those years, but I also didn't worry about going out to eat every now and then, or stress too much about travel expenses for all these weddings I keep going to. Yes, I'll be fine, I lived on this amount easily my first year of grad school (before I had the fellowship). But it's hard to take a pay cut!

I think the bigger worry for me though is whether or not I'll have full funding next year. I'm planning to apply for dissertation fellowships, since my department doesn't usually have enough money to pay full TA-ships to everyone who needs it, and my advisor may or may not have RA money for me. I'll be a sixth-year graduate student then, and even though that is still below the average number of years it takes to graduate in our department, many sixth-year students find themselves without full funding. People have ended up with 1/2 funding, which isn't even enough to pay the necessary bills and buy groceries! Let alone gas, medical expenses, required travel to conferences, etc. Who knew that in a wealthy area such as Computer Science, even graduate students making good progress have to take out loans just to be able to eat? I want to avoid that; I thought by being a computer scientist I WAS avoiding that, but c'est la vie.

So, thus begins my second round of fellowship applications. Hopefully I'll be as successful as I was last time! And hopefully I'll still find a way to continue to save a little bit of money this year as well. Wish me luck!

Sorry we missed you, Summer!

2009-09-17T11:31:00.002-04:00

Wow, it's already the middle of September. How time flies! I have multiple half written blog posts from earlier in the summer that I should finish later. Maybe this weekend?

It really feels like we never had summer at all this year. We had some nice days, and two weeks of sweltering heat, but mostly we had rain. Once it got nice out I was so busy working on my thesis proposal that I didn't really see much of the sun! Now it's getting cold and dreary out, which really is more of what I expect for the school year anyway. At least the new students had a week of sunny days before the dreariness swept in. You would think we were in Seattle!

There are so many things I wanted to do this summer: hiking, biking, vacation. We did some of it, but not as much as in the years past. I think this is due to Tim working on his proposal in the beginning of the summer, me working on my proposal at the end of the summer, and most of free time spent either moving or traveling for one of the 4 weddings we went to. I enjoyed all of that time, but I guess it really ate into the time for other outdoor activities!

The good news is that we still have at least a month before it's too cold to do hiking and biking without tons of layers, so we are going to try to get out as much as we can between now and then. Technically it is still summer until the end of the month, not that it has felt that way the last few days. But we'll make the most of it! And maybe by then we'll be finished moving in and can spend our free time actually relaxing. Assuming we have any to spend on anything!

Working at a cafe

2009-08-03T14:16:00.004-04:00

I have to say that one of my favorite places to work is at a cafe in town. I'm actually there right now, so since I'm blogging it probably will not be too convincing to say that I get a lot of work done here; but I do! The music right now is awesome, with "Boys of Summer" just finishing. It's like having Pandora playing, but without the need for headphones! I think I'm partially lucky that they play music I really like, if that wasn't the case it would probably be really annoying.

However, I work best in a well lit area with either complete quiet, or constant expected noise. It's the intermittent noise (like people entering and leaving the room, coughing, etc) that distracts me the most. I suspect that is the case for a lot of people, hence the reason cubicles are so detested.

Of course, this all also means that I may just like working at the cafe because my desk is in a windowless room that resembles a well decorated dungeon. Sure, the posters and such make the room seem less dreary, but it doesn't really help with the lack of light. Even the new brighter ceiling lights don't seem so bright anymore, which makes me scare to think about how dark the room must have been my first few years before the light replacement.

Anyway, if you are looking for a good place to work outside of your own dreary office/cubicle/desk in the corner, consider your local cafe! The pot of tea makes everything better, not to mention you can actually get natural light! Just don't get too distracted with people watching, and you'll be OK...

Softball Semifinals! First time ever??

2009-07-30T11:50:00.003-04:00

This summer is my fourth season of playing on a town co-ed non-umpired softball team. I was on a different team the first two years than the most recent two years, as it was created as an overflow for my current team. The team I used to be on (called the Turkeys) is a very good team, with very competitive people and a rather beefed up line-up. The team I'm currently on used to be consistently one of the worst teams in the league, but I have loved playing with them anyway. There are a lot of decent players on the team, but maybe not as much confidence as necessary.

Well, this year has been different! This summer we ended the regular season as number 5 out of 12 teams, with a winning record of 11-9. We got a bye in the first round of playoffs, and solidly beat the number 4 team in our first playoff Tuesday night. That team narrowly beat us twice in the regular season, so our 17-3 win was fabulous.

So, we are on to the semi-finals and possibly the finals tonight! In the semis we play the team that is undoubtedly the best team in the league, the Diamond Studs. If we manage to pull out a win, we'll play either the Turkeys or their semifinals opponent in the finals. This is definitely a big turnaround for us Coyotes!

I'm so incredibly busy right now, but it's good to get some exercise in here and there. Wish us luck for tonight, both that we don't get rain delayed to next week and that we pull out the win!

Organizing Proposal Writing

2009-06-25T19:34:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm really trying to hunker down on the proposal writing, I have found a few techniques work much better for me than others (although I can't guarantee I'm in the majority here):

Lots of hot tea drinking. It's calming, but more exciting than water. I'm an avid tea drinker to begin with, but usually drink less in warm weather. However, it's helped me concentrate very well over the past week, as well as forcing me to need to get out of my chair every few hours.
Make a proposal playlist, and listen to it. I'm partially stealing this one from my writer friend Kathleen, as she makes playlists for her different books as she writes. I'm currently using music that is not distracting, but still upbeat to help keep my energy levels up as a write. Lately I've been spending all of my music time on Pandora, as I wrote about before, but sometimes you just need to have too varied of music for that to work. However, if you don't own enough music for your playlist, this could be a nice alternative.
Break the file into individual files. Assuming you are writing in LaTeX, this is pretty easy, but is something I never do for writing. Basically, you make a file for each part of your proposal (introduction.tex, chapter1.tex, etc), and then include them in the main file using the command \input{filename}. Fairly straightforward, but makes it easier to find where you are in the file, AND it helps keep you from getting overwhelmed.

However, the most important piece of advice have so far is this: don't work all day on it. Unless you are one of the few people who can work 15 hours/day without ever getting burned out, don't torture yourself from dawn until dusk. Today I really figured this one out, and it's why I decided to post. Today I put all of my proposal and previous writing work on my lab computer (fairly new, so I still use my laptop for a lot of my research). Now, my plan is to only allot time for proposal writing during the day, in the lab, unless I specifically plan to work outside of the lab that day (in which case I'll just have to get the files). This way I feel more pressure to be productive while I'm at school, and can concentrate on other things in the evening (other work, hobbies, wedding planning, moving, etc). Overall, I expect this to lower stress levels significantly, at least for the next few weeks.

I'm lucky in that I have exactly 2 months before I defend my proposal, meaning that if I take a month to finish writing and revising I'll still be done early. But of course that means that motivation on some days can be hard. Therefore I have my last piece of advice for now: if you have enough time between when you start and need to finish your proposal, be sure to have other projects to work on too. Now, all PhD students should have tons of work they should be doing instead of writing their proposals, so that having the work to do shouldn't be an issue. But the point is that if you have enough time to have low motivation, do some work on those other projects! If they are related to your thesis anyway, it's useful even for the proposal. Just don't get too caught up in them; the proposal should be the primary focus, otherwise you'll never get it done.

Buffy vs. Edward

2009-06-24T16:09:00.002-04:00

Earlier this week my housemate sent me a link to a video created to depict Buffy (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) beating up Edward (the vampire from book/movie Twilight). The point of the video was basically to show that yes, Edward is a creep, and yes, Buffy could totally take him.

Buffy Summers takes down Edward Cullen

Since I've written before about enjoying Twilight, and vampire stories in general, it seemed appropriate to also share this link. If you know anything about these stories, you will hopefully find great amusement in the video! Also, as you may notice in the credits, something from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was used; see if you can find it, it's only a very short clip, but if you think about it, it becomes very obvious!

First Biology Conference

2009-06-24T08:55:00.000-04:00

Last week I went to my first biology conference, Systems Biology of Human Diseases, held at Harvard Medical School. It was definitely different from the computer science conferences I have been to thus far. Of course, for me the biggest difference was that I was surrounded by people that were experts in a completely different field from mine, but yet were still working on some similar problems. We just happen to have very different vocabularies. Overall though, I think it was a worthwhile conference to attend. I learned some new keywords, learned more about how biologists describe cancer, and got some new ideas for how to present and do my research. Not bad for a day's worth of time. Unfortunately I couldn't stay through the poster session thanks to a migraine, so hopefully next time I won't have that problem. Luckily this conference will be in Boston again next year before they merge with a European conference, so I will have easy access for at least that year. After that we will have to decide if it is worth traveling to Europe for it.

Undergrad Class Again

2009-06-23T11:45:00.003-04:00

Earlier in the year I wrote about experiencing undergrad class again. Later in the semester I sat in on two lectures of my own department's intro programming class, as part of an observation for my "teaching undergraduates" class. I was in the same horrible classroom/auditorium I was in for the other class, but it was much emptier and thus quieter.

Overall, I was very impressed with the faculty member giving the lectures. Sure, he wasn't perfect, but he had a great energy to him. This is one of the reasons I had chosen to observe him over some other professors; I knew he brought a lot of energy and excitement to teaching at the graduate level, and I really wanted to see that happen at the undergraduate level.

In the second of the two lectures he brought his research area (Computer Vision) into it. He helped the kids think about how they might go about solving problems in the area with what they had learned in the class: arrays, I/O streams, etc. Really, I think if more professors used this type of lecture throughout their intro courses, we would have a better retention rate in Computer Science. It takes a step back from what can often be boring topics, and shows that there is an interesting use for all of it after all. I hope when I start teaching I am able to bring this sort of thing to my lectures as well.

E-mail becoming unusable?

2009-06-22T11:36:00.000-04:00

A few days ago our e-mail system went down overnight. Most people (who I know, at least) didn't notice for awhile. However, I had a big clue: no junk mail. My e-mail account had gone all night without acquiring any spam. Since I tend to get about 45 junk e-mails over the course of 8 hours each night, getting none was quite suspicious.

This leads me to wondering whether or not e-mail is really starting to become unusable. If we don't win against spam, phishing, etc, will we become too frustrated with it? I can get 100 spam messages in a single day. Many of them are moved to the junk e-mail folder; however, when I'm sitting at my computer doing work and the new message icon appears in my system tray, I always end up looking to see what it was, and it is almost always junk. I like to have this indicator, but it's starting to become not worth it.

I think most of my junk e-mail is due to a mailing list I'm on. I'm hoping that once I am off this mailing list in September, i will see a dramatic decrease in unwanted mail.

My Gmail account also recently started having spam issues. I never see spam on that account, and starting earlier this month I started seeing a few e-mails of spam a day. It hasn't happened for a few days, but I am sure it will happen again.

I feel like my e-mail box has become much like my real mail box: mostly just ads for services I don't need or want. How do we fix this? This is not my area at all, so I have no great solutions. I don't like the proposed solution of making e-mail cost money, as right now it's a great medium for staying in touch even just throughout a day (I have entire conversations through e-mail throughout a single day, that sometimes involve 20 messages, which could really add up in cost). I do believe we need to find a way for it to not be profitable for spammers/phishers to bother; or would that just mean even more e-mails, as the likelihood of finding someone who will fall for it is low? I hope that in a decade it will be common knowledge what types of e-mails to ignore, but my brain tells me that is unlikely. Won't spammers just keep evolving with the technology? So how do we get spammers to give up? Maybe we need psychologists to work on this problem.

Proposing

2009-06-14T13:12:00.001-04:00

Well, now that I've experienced one type of proposal, I need to worry a bit more about the other type: the PhD proposal! I've decided that it's not as scary as it seems. True, you are putting your work and ideas out there to be critiqued and questioned, and you are defining what the remainder of your PhD will contain. But still, it's more of an opportunity for you to get feedback before you try to defend the dissertation, and it's really there to make sure you are on the right track.

I'm rather excited about proposing, which will happen this August. I've had a general view of where I want my thesis to go for a little while now, so it's great to finally get that out there. I wish I had done it earlier, and I wish I understood more about what a proposal is a few years ago. So here is my attempt to make a short list, that at least applies to my own department:

Propose as soon as you can! - My advisor was suggested to me that I propose before I was really mentally ready to think about, and it so it was put off for a few years. Looking back, I probably could have done a reasonable proposal LAST summer, which would have been great for making sure I went in the right direction this past year.
Think of it as an opportunity - Like most things, it's both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that you will be totally stressed out unless you are never stressed out about anything. The blessing is that it's a great time to take a step back and make sure you're going in the right direction, to get great feedback from successful professors other than your own advisor, and a big step at really defining the core of your thesis.
Don't spend forever on the writing - Our department just changed the expectations (de facto requirements) for the proposal: it should be less than 20 pages, and not look anything like a thesis. Those of us who are the first string of people to propose under these guidelines are extra stressed since our proposals may not look like what people are used to, but really it's for the better. A shorter proposal might actually be read, you can spend less time on the writing, and it makes the presentation much easier to put together. This is not a published document, so don't waste lots of time! (I'm still having trouble following this piece of advice)
Schedule early - I scheduled my August proposal defense in May. With 4 professors needing to have the same time slot free, don't wait until the last moment. My fiance almost had a fiasco because he waited too long to schedule a time, and everyone's times were conflicting during the month (yes, the entire month!) he wanted to have his proposal during. He fixed his problem by doing the first day of the following month. But the point is still valid: plan early.
Propose in the summer - I'm not sure if this is good advice yet, but so far I like it. There is less pressure during the summer, so it is easier to work without feeling stressed out. Hopefully your professors will be easier to schedule for the defense as well, since they won't have teaching and office hours as conflicts.
Listen to your advisor - This advice holds for most things. They are faculty already for many reasons, they won't (generally) lead you astray. If they tell you to wait to propose, they probably have a good reason; hopefully your relationship with them is one where you can discuss why you should wait. If they tell you to get a move on, there is probably good reason for that too (probably).

If I come up with any other great suggestions as I work on my proposal, I'll post again. Hopefully I will still be feeling optimistic in a month or two.

Life: everything at once!

2009-05-20T17:58:00.001-04:00

The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy. I have not only been working on my own multiple research projects, but I have also recently starting working a project that a younger student in my lab is doing. I'm helping out from now until his paper deadline in June, to help with getting the work done in time, and to help by just being an additional person with ideas since the project is complex. It's an interesting project, but there is lots going on and lots to fix. I hope we get it done in time!

In addition to all of that actual work (think "too many projects"), I've also been actively trying to find a place to live next year, dealing with the fact that my car failed its emissions test during inspection, and planning a trip to look at wedding locations. Unfortunately everything seems to need to be done during normal business hours, which is quite a hassle.

Today we found 2 places that we'd love to live at next year, but each have draw backs. We disagree on which drawbacks are important, so it will be interesting to see if we can compromise or if we'll just keep looking and risk losing these places.

As far as the car is concerned, the first place we took it said the repairs would probably cost over $1,000 and wasn't worth doing on such an old car (to which I thought "oh my, my car is 9 years old!). I was going to apply for the Economic Hardship Repair Extensionso that I wouldn't have to fix it right now, but then I realized that we didn't take it to an official registered emissions repair shop, and therefore the quote wouldn't count toward it. So we took it to another place in town, and they couldn't replicate the error codes, and told us to drive it around so it could gather more data. Today we took it back, it had enough data but no error codes, so we returned to the inspection station and it passed with no problems. Are there still unfixed problems? Maybe. Am I concerned? Only marginally, since it's not a safety issue. I might be in the market for a new (i.e. new to me) car soon though. Not that I have any other expensive events coming up...

So planning for our trip has been annoying in the sense that I have to call people during business hours, and I'm very busy with work and meetings during the day. So far I've managed to make appointments for us to see 3 potential locations for the wedding and reception, but still need to make more. And we are traveling to visit them next week! You would think that being a graduate student would mean you could find the time for this sort of thing, but I think I am proving that is not the case. It's only true when you are in a non-busy time of year, and right now is ultra busy for me!

Well, back to work. Lots and lots of things to do, even though it's already past 5PM. I blame the combination of all of these things going on for why I haven't been posting!

Venting and De-Stressing are Crucial!

2009-04-11T16:27:00.002-04:00

Occasionally in graduate school you feel frustrated, annoyed, overwhelmed, undervalued, or some other negative feeling. Generally, graduate students vent about this sort of thing to friends, significant others, or family members. Venting is a very good idea, as it will help you get over it (from putting it out there), see that you're not the only one to ever feel that way (depending on who you vent to), and find a way to move on. It's very hard to be productive when you are overrun with these types of feelings!

Another graduate student in my lab and I have been meeting for lunch each Friday this semester, which we have dubbed something like "weekly-special-psychotherapy-lunch." We are friends as well as co-workers, but we don't see each other much during the week as we don't both tend to work in the same room. So every Friday we find out how the other person's week has been going, give suggestions for how to deal with spoken and unspoken issues, and give overall encouragement. Sometimes I don't even realize exactly what is holding me back from getting something done until I have to verbalize it to someone who isn't my fiance. Yes, complaining to my fiance is my usual way of dealing with stress, but it's very good to have other venues to let it out! A more objective viewpoint (or at least a viewpoint perceived to be more objective) can be very helpful.

Why am I writing this? Well, I think too often people (especially women) bottle it all up inside. Eventually you will start seeing the world in a different way than it really is, and that's when you really start to wonder if you should be doing what you are doing with your life. The answer is almost always "YES, you SHOULD!" but too often we convince ourselves otherwise. Like I said in my last post, a little encouragement goes a long way, and we should always keep that in mind for ourselves and others. Even people who appear to be succeeding can easily be second guessing themselves, or so frustrated with a project they can't see straight. If you are that person, or you friend/co-worker is that person, I highly recommend a weekly special psychotherapy lunch!

Computer Science and Volleyball

2009-04-10T23:00:00.000-04:00

One of my few outside-of-computer-science activities that I actually do every week is volleyball. After our intramural game last Wednesday, I was thinking about all of the ways that the two are similar. For instance:

Time Outs - In volleyball, sometimes you just need to call a timeout, mentally regroup, and then get back into it. In our game we were losing 3-9 to a team we had just squarely beaten; I called a timeout, and then we proceeded to win 15-9. What a difference that timeout made! In research it's the same way. Sometimes you just need to take a step back from what you're doing, regroup mentally, and then start off again where you left off.
Team Effort - In volleyball, you have 6 people on the court at any given time. If you don't trust your teammates, you end up running over them to get balls they were perfectly prepared to hit, usually better than you end up hitting them. To really play well, you should back up other people and trust their abilities. In research you also need to trust your group members, but still encourage and back them up when possible. It's all about sharing information, ideas, and letting each other find his/her own way without stepping on each other's toes.
Encouragement - When playing a team sport, you want to try to keep everyone energized and feeling good about their playing. If someone starts to doubt their abilities from a few bad hits, they are going to second guess everything else they do that game. A little "that's ok, you'll get it next time" or "great job!" will go a long way. With research, you should also encourage others even when they are struggling. Everyone needs encouragement in everything they do in life, but especially so in "high" stress situations like volleyball and research!
Practice! - Obviously, if you don't practice volleyball you are not going to retain your skills. Much of it is muscle memory and reactions, which can be learned and refined over time. In computer science research you also need to practice skills such as public speaking, programming, and critical thinking. It may not be muscle memory, but it is still a set of learnable and improvable skills.

It's true that the comparison between team sports and teamwork in school and work has been made many times. However, it's nice to be reminded occasionally that our extracurricular activities really do relate to graduate school, and working on good habits and skills in one can easily help improve the other. All the more reason to be sure to get adequate "play" time in addition to work time!

I love April Fools, all because of Google

2009-04-01T16:51:00.003-04:00

The title says it all. Google always pulls really great stunts for April Fool's Day. I especially love this year's CADIE. The entire concept is crazy, as we are definitely nowhere near having artificial intelligence at that level. Google really just makes the holiday so much better for all of us computer folks, because there are even deeper reasons to laugh than the pandas, rainbows, unicorns, and angry faces.

I also love how they incorporated it into so many of their sites: images, blogger, search, etc. I'm also very amused that it is changing over the course of the day; for instance, images had pictures of unicorns, rainbows, etc as the suggested images that CADIE thought everyone would like. Then sometime this afternoon it changed to an angry face, lighting bolt, and other unhappy things (including a glaring panda icon) because CADIE discovered that people in fact don't all love unicorns and rainbows. Hilarious!

For the drab day today has been, Google has really made it much better!

Other March News

2009-03-30T12:05:00.000-04:00

Of course, my other March news is that during our spring break, Tim proposed! So I now I have a fiance instead of a boyfriend. Pretty crazy! This also means that we will definitely be dealing with a two-body problem when we are applying for jobs; but we were already assuming that would be the case anyway. I'm not too worried about it though; it will be one more variable, but other people have done it before. I have another year before I have to worry about that anyway though, so I think I'll save my stress for wedding planning!

Last week we looked at scores of reception and ceremony sites (I would like an outdoor wedding), started on registries, looked at dresses, started guest lists, and thought about our budget (not necessarily in that order). We also started a wedding website and blog, where I will post all of my wedding thoughts that don't relate to being a computer scientist.

Overall, it's very exciting, and already stressful! I have tons of research deadlines that I absolutely will not be compromising due to wedding planning, but still the planning has to happen. So far working on wedding in the evening and work during the day has been successful, but that can't go on indefinitely! So this will definitely be an interesting time management experience.

MS Degree

2009-03-24T14:07:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago I received the paper version of my Masters degree in the mail! In our program the MS degree is just proof that you've gotten to a certain stage as you work toward your PhD so it's not as exciting as it could be (this concept still baffles my family). However, it did give me something exciting to tell my family at the beginning of March! My grandfather was the most excited, I think. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote back to everyone on the e-mail I sent (I've edited using standard punctuation to denote my edits):

...We now have five such degrees, either MA or MS, in the family. This includes your dad, [cousin's husband, other cousin's husband, cousin,] and yourself. I was within two credits of completing mine, when attending night school and summer sessions on the GI bill while teaching full time, when the first of my credits earned started rotting because of excess time. By that time I was within just a few years of my second retirement and decided that the increased effort to reinvigorate old credits would not be worth it. I do admit, however, that I would LOVE to be in the group listed above and I have the greatest respect for the intelligence, focus, and willingness to persevere required to achieve this and higher objectives. You GO girl, we all love and admire you...

I share that part of that e-mail because I think it's very indicative of a lot of things. The first, is that I have a very supportive family that totally encourages both the men and women to pursue whatever type of career/degree path they desire. A lot of women don't have that, and I believe that's one of the reasons that technical fields in general see fewer women in them.

The other aspect is that it is not assumed that anyone will go for a graduate degree even if they do pursue an undergraduate degree! It's amazing to me that some people I know have parents with graduate degrees, grandparents with graduate degrees, etc. They are all almost expected to obtain that level of education; even if they aren't actually expected to, there is at least that perception growing up. I will be the first in my family to get a PhD (at least as far I am aware of!), which makes it feel even more exciting! I guess the MS qualifies for that general type of status as well (being part of the first generation with a large number of MS degrees). I certainly don't think I'm better than other relatives for having done this, but I do think it's interesting to have chosen this path despite not having many family members to have also done so. This is especially true when I think about how few women in the US go for the PhD in general!

Barbara Liskov wins Turing Award!

2009-03-10T16:20:00.004-04:00

What an amazing day! I was just casually checking my e-mail and what do I find out? That another woman has won the Turing Award!

MIT Press Release
ACM Press Release

Although I feel bad to be surprised about the fact a woman has won (why should anyone be surprised about that??), I don't know how I could not be excited. When Fran Allen won it seemed like a barrier had been broken, but it still seemed like it would a long time before the community was willing to honor another woman. Apparently we are better than I thought! From reading through the press releases she sounds like an amazing researcher. I wanted to share a few paragraphs from the ACM Press Release:

The award cites Liskov for her foundational innovations to designing and building the pervasive computer system designs that power daily life. Her achievements in programming language design have made software more reliable and easier to maintain. They are now the basis of every important programming language since 1975, including Ada, C++, Java, and C#. The Turing Award, widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing," is named for the British mathematician Alan M. Turing. The award carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc.

The first U.S. woman to be awarded a Ph.D. from a computer science department (in 1968 from Stanford University), Liskov revolutionized the programming field with groundbreaking research that underpins virtually every modern computer application for both consumers and businesses. Her contributions have led to fundamental changes in building the computer software programs that form the infrastructure of our information-based society. Her legacy has made software systems more accessible, reliable, and secure 24/7.

I want to go dance around the block! Maybe one day (in many decades) my research will be great enough to receive this type of acknowledgment. Once can only hope! Despite her obviously being a deserving recipient, her success will help highlight what great things women can do (and are already doing) in the field of computer science.

Guitar Hero World Tour!

2009-03-03T13:48:00.002-05:00

Last month was Tim's birthday, so some friends and I got together to buy him Guitar Hero World Tour with the complete band. We had a huge debate about Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero, and in the end Guitar Hero won out.

Since then, we've played many times. Recently we bought 2 more Wii controllers (we only had 2) and a second guitar so that we could have 4 people playing at once! Our first Guitar Hero "party" was a big success, and we plan to have more. Since our living room is small, we can't have very many people over at a time, but we'd like to have everyone over eventually who helped buy the game for him. Between that and Killer Bunnies, we have lots of weekend activities and not enough time to do them!

I've become a big fan of the drum set. I didn't realize that it came to me more naturally than others until we had our Guitar Hero party and multiple people had problems with the basic drum beat. I've never played drum before (although I've always thought it would be "cool"), but I've been involved enough in music that I can easily keep a beat. It's a lot of fun to learn how to control your hands independently so you can hit the 5 different drums/cymbals in many different patterns. I'm nowhere near an expert, but I hope to be able to play all of the songs on Medium difficulty soon on drums!

One of our friends actually plays guitar, and he was a natural at Guitar Hero guitar. He was very quickly playing on Medium difficulty, and had no trouble with songs that Tim and I couldn't play (even though we'd played Guitar Hero guitar for many hours on Medium before then)! So it seems that musical experience can definitely help in this game.

Overall though, it was a great investment. If you can find a way to afford the $200 for this game, you should definitely get it. We use it to wind down in the evening, or take a break from work on the weekends. It's great for multi player or single player, and it feels great to see yourself getting better! Although music experience may give you an edge, you don't need it to play. You don't even need to be able to keep a beat to start playing this game, although the drums may be the hardest instrument for you. I can't see us getting sick of it anytime soon though!

Mists of Avalon - the movie

2009-02-25T11:14:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I watched the made for TV movie Mists of Avalon. If you haven't read the book, you will most likely enjoy the movie. It tells a compelling story, has decent acting, and is interesting throughout.

However, it tells a different story than the book. If you really enjoyed the book, I would recommend skipping the movie. I was frustrated throughout on how they warped characters, warped storylines, and warped overarching points the author was making with her characters and plot lines. I think if I had watched this movie without reading the book I would have really enjoyed it and found it interesting. But after reading the book it was quite unpleasant and almost upsetting to watch. They completely missed the point!

If you want to watch this movie AND read the book, I recommend reading the book, waiting about 5 years (unless you have a really good memory about books), and then watching the movie.

Mists of Avalon - a must read!

2009-02-02T14:06:00.003-05:00

Two Saturdays ago I finally finished the book Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It took me about two years to read (with at least 5 other books started and finished during that time), but was well worth it! The characters are very deep, the storyline is very compelling, and the writing is fabulous.

For those who haven't read it, the book is essentially the King Arthur legend told from the perspective of the women. There are multiple perspectives given for any given period of time, and those perspectives are often from opposite sides of the spectrum. It is a great new way to look at the legend, and is very interesting in how the events intertwine with the social forces that are at work today.

I truly believe that everyone should read this book, as it is enlightening in many ways, but I especially believe that all women should read this book. It is very touching, and actually a bit empowering as you are reminded that women really can accomplish great things even when the social norms may not allow it.

Now of course I want to see the movie (The Mists of Avalon), although I doubt it will be as good as the book. How will it deal with the internal musings that encompass most of the writing?? And how will is condense almost 900 pages into a few short hours? Should be interesting.

I've also just discovered that there are two more books whose storylines occur before Mists of Avalon: Lady of Avalon, and The Forest House (Avalon, Book 2). Despite the fact that I have many other books to read, I may have to pick these up at some point as well. There are also a number of books written by a different author that relate to this series of books.

Since it's been over a week since I finished it and I am still gushing about how wonderful it was, I think it is fair to say that this is one of my new favorites!

Experiencing Undergrad Class Again

2009-01-27T13:55:00.007-05:00

Classes just started up again, and although I am officially done with all course credits for my MS and PhD, I am sitting in on a class. This is not just any class though; it's an undergrad biology class! I know, I know...shocking.

The first class meeting was yesterday morning, in an auditorium. It wasn't a huge auditorium though, probably only about 100 people can sit in there (at least if you are limiting people to sitting on chairs). Of course, my first impression was "oh my goodness, they are all so little and young!" but after that all I could think was "shush!"

Sure, sure, I might not be able to say anything about looking young (I can still be mistaken as an undergrad by people over the age of 30!), but I definitely have no qualms talking about the noise level. It was quieter during class than before or after, but the chatter never completely stopped! I can see people thinking they could get away with it in a 200 or 300 person class, but 100? Maybe it was just because I was in the 3rd to last row that I heard it all, as maybe the first 10 rows know how to be quiet, but I doubt it. There was a girl sitting 2 seats away from me who was only quiet when the professor was explaining how the class would be graded. Otherwise she was chattering away with the people around her the entire time!

On top of the general noise, 5 minutes before class was supposed to end it got very noisy. I was very confused for about 20 seconds, and then the professor said "By my watch it is only 12:00, and class ends at 12:05 unless we end early." Apparently everyone was packing up and chatting and getting ready to go! 5 minutes early! I still can't believe it. We knew better than that in high school, and I'm really not THAT much older than these kids. To be fair, where we were at in the slides at 12 easily could have been mistaken for a stopping point, but the professor hadn't stopped. At least they quieted down rather quickly, we had 5 more minutes of class, and then we left.

I do feel sorry for the kids in the class though. They have FOUR exams this semester, quizzes, and the class is going to be taught differently than normal. Usually it is on 2 topics, half and half, but this semester it is primarily only 1 of those topics. It should be interesting to see how much that affects their later classes. Not to mention that those seats are hard, close together, and not very comfortable! There was lots of dried gum under the pull-out writing desk for my seat as well. Gross!

I have to say that I do not miss taking this type of class, and I think it will definitely be interesting to be teaching one in a few years!

New niece!

2009-01-13T12:01:00.002-05:00

My sister gave birth to my second niece last night, at 1:28AM! What a night! I had really hoped to be down in VA when the new one came into the world, but I had two conference papers due last night at 3AM! The original due date for the baby was New Year's Day, which I would have been there for, but such is life!

Well, I don't really have classes to worry about right now so maybe I'll get a chance to see the baby some time in the next month or two. That's one of the worst parts about being in MA, I'm far enough away that I miss out on things like this! Of course, having conference submission deadlines in January doesn't really help much in general either. The best part about being a graduate student though is I might actually be able to take off enough time to go down and visit!

I hope everyone's new year is starting off with great events like this as well!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T17:14:00.004-05:00

Just before Christmas I made my way down to Virginia, via a few stops in New Jersey. It was so sad to leave so much snow; we had at least a foot of snow at my house when I left, and it was still falling! It definitely didn't help with driving progress, but I still made OK time. My bigger driving problem was that I was still on 66 near DC at 3:00 when rush hour started. Over an hour was added on to my total trip because of that timing. Oh well, I still made it home in time for dinner!

Christmas was great as I was able to see my adorable niece. She is around a year and a half old, and has grown so much since I saw her this summer! I gave her a play camera for Christmas as she loves having her picture taken, and she seemed to really enjoy it. It may be another year before she really understands how to use it, but she likes pushing the buttons on it and having other people pretend to take her picture with it.

Today though we actually had some flurries here! I couldn't believe it was actually snowing, especially since it was warm enough for me to wash my car yesterday morning. It didn't stick though, and also didn't last for very long. But at least it felt like winter for a bit. How amazing, winter in December!

Well, I only have a few more days of vacation left, and then it's back to Massachusetts to work on all of those paper deadlines that are rapidly approaching. It was a fun break though, and since it's snowing in MA again today I'll definitely have snow when I get back!

Officially Class Free!

2008-12-16T13:26:00.004-05:00

As of 12:30PM this afternoon, I have finished all of the course requirements for my graduate program! This is of course assuming I pass the class whose final I took this morning, but I'm not very worried about that.

Yes, I am a fourth year graduate student who is just now finishing classes; but for my department, this is a normal amount of time. Luckily, they just decreased our required course load by 4 classes, so instead of taking classes again next semester, I can completely focus on my research. What a relief! I am not opposed to classes, but I have lost so much time in the last 3.5 years because of classes that I can't wait to catch up on all of the different research pursuits I've been working on. I plan to still sit in on some classes and take a few interesting seminars, but now I can choose solely based on what is useful to me, and therefore concentrate on learning what I need to know instead of worrying about a grade.

It's an amazing feeling to be done. Sure, I have a year or two left in the program (our median is almost 7 years), but I finally don't have to take classes! Amazing! It's similar to the feeling I had after taking my last final in undergrad, where this immense burden is just gone. An important goal has been accomplished! I feel as if I have plenty of time to accomplish anything I want. Hopefully that will last at least a few days.

You can have an Obama [insert anything]!

2008-12-10T15:45:00.003-05:00

It's interesting how many e-mails I get from Barack Obama's campaign as well as MoveOn.org a month after elections have ended. They are still trying to raise money, and are going about trying to get donations by offering many different free items for your donation. In the past few weeks I have been offered "limited edition" calendars, hats, scarves, t-shirts (first there was a Victory t-shirt, now there's an Inauguration t-shirt), long-sleeve t-shirts, and stickers. Actually, the stickers from MoveOn.org were free right after the election, although they encouraged you to also make a donation (I got a free one).

Do people really need to be essentially bribed to give money? Wouldn't it be more effective if all of the money went to the campaign, instead of also having to pay for the goodies? But yet, I can't help but want the goodies myself. The idea of "free" things, even if I'm technically paying for it, can be too much to resist! However, I have indeed resisting giving more money to anyone this late in the year (Although I did get conned into finally giving to an environmental group, and my "gift" for being a first time donor should be coming in the mail soon!).

On another note, anyone who watches The Daily Show is probably thinking about the segment they did just after the election about all of the Obama stuff that is floating around nowadays. "Get your commemorate plate now, to celebrate the election of our first black president!" It's consumerism at it's best (or worst, depending on how you look at it), but yet I still want "stuff" so I can commemorate such an exciting time in America! So far I've only succumbed to stickers though, as I'm trying to get less "stuff" in general!! I guess it helps to have a limited amount of disposable income, thank you graduate school! Although most people can probably "thank" the recession for giving them that same situation.

Rutgers, New Brunswick

2008-11-17T14:18:00.004-05:00

This past Saturday I finally visited the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, Tim's Alma Mater. It's interesting that the campus is actually divided up into multiple different campuses based on department. Since Tim was an engineer he lived on and primarily took classes on the Busch campus. From what I saw, this campus was the most industrial looking, with concrete and brick buildings. Their new Biomedical Engineering building was gorgeous, but the rest left something to be desired. However, we also visited the downtown College Avenue campus that from what I understand is primarily for liberal arts departments. That campus was beautiful! There were many buildings with wonderful architecture, and many old large houses that are used by different academic departments.

It was fun to finally see what Rutgers looks like, and see how the different New Brunswick campuses relate to each other. I can't imagine having to take a bus to another campus to take classes outside of my department/college, it seems like it would be a scheduling nightmare. Also, you could never have a roommate who has a vastly different major than you do! For some people that might be nice, but my best friend in college who was also my roommate for all but senior year was definitely not a Computer Scientist! I may never have even met her if we had both attended a university that was segregated by college in that way. How sad.

I wish I had some pictures to share, but I didn't take a camera with me. It was also a very overcast day, so they wouldn't be very good anyway. Suffice it to say that the different campuses are very different in their building styles, and I still think Virginia Tech has a much more beautiful main campus...even if I am a little biased. They definitely are two rather different universities, at least as far as that can be possible!

Don't forget to Vote!

2008-11-04T11:15:00.002-05:00

Well, I just voted for president in person for the first time! This is not the first presidential election I've voted in, but before it was with an absentee ballot. Now I had the pleasure of going to the voting booth! Although our voting booths aren't really booths, you could turn around and see someone else voting. At least my precinct didn't really have any lines though! I think I picked a good time to show up; that may be a benefit of being a grad student, in that I can make my own hours on days like this. :)

I also had the delight of getting to vote for John Kerry again, although this time for Senate. At least he'll probably win this time...ha!

If you haven't voted already, please go vote! Every vote counts, and it could be very close! I'm so pumped about Election Day, I hope I can concentrate enough to finish the work I have due tomorrow! Not to mention some of my foreign friends are going to be over hyper today about how important the election is and how they wish they could vote in it.

Big mistake in little itty bitty packages

2008-10-28T14:24:00.003-04:00

When I went to Target this weekend I saw the candy aisles, and suddenly remembering that Friday is Halloween inspired me to buy candy for my lab. I've done this every year since I came to grad school, using a plastic pumpkin to contain it on a bookshelf.

Well, now that I've had about 6 mini-candy bars in the span of 4 hours, I'm starting to wonder if this act of kindness is indeed a fault. Maybe the guys have enough self control around cheap chocolate (come on, you know some dark almond turtles from the local candy maker would be soooo much yummier and totally unaffordable), but for some reason I don't. Honestly I'm not sure they have much more self control either, but I have an added problem: the extra candy that didn't fit in the pumpkin is in my desk drawer. I did just lose all the weight I'd gained over the past year (thank you, exercise), but I suspect in the next week I may gain a few pounds of it back. Actually, I'm not sure it will even take that long...I've already eaten 4 more while writing this paragraph.

The funniest thing is that I was eating so healthy the past few weeks; I'd make a big dinner, and then eat leftovers for a few days, and then repeat. I haven't had an instant type lunch more than a few times in the past few months, and even though I've spent a good 10+ hours in the lab most days I haven't been snacking on junk food (because it wasn't here). So much for that.

Well, I guess I should enjoy my yummy holiday treats now, so that next week I can be better about it. Those evil little bite sized candies...yum...

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

2008-10-22T17:00:00.000-04:00

Last week when I put the trash out I was very impressed that our standard sized trash can was only half full, meaning our house of 4 grad students had created half our usual amount of trash! The recycling bin was also not any more overflowing than normal. Today is trash day again, and as of this morning the can was empty! Granted, we have a basically full kitchen trash can, some trash in the bathroom, and some bedroom trash, but that still means we will have a low trash amount again this week. We have reduced!!

Of course, the amount of "stuff" we buy has always been fairly low; grad students only have but so much money to throw around. On the same note, we've always tended to reuse: we have plastic and glass food containers we reuse in the house, we acquire much of our furniture used and give our old furniture to new homes, give clothes and "stuff" to Salvation Army or sell at yard sales, and put old things to new use.

Recycling though has been a more interesting progression for me. When I was a kid I didn't really care much about the environmental impact our actions had. I was brought up to not be wasteful and not throw away anything that could be reused, but it was my younger sister who was adamant about recycling. For instance, she would remind us to recycle our soda can when the thought of throwing it away had only half-formed in our minds. We didn't have house pick up of recyclables in VA (they still don't, at least in the southern half of the state), so bags of recycling would pile up in the basement until it was time to take them to the recycling center. What a hassle! I never really cared all that much about it, and didn't think it would really make a difference. To this day everyone in my immediate family still recycles, but I think sometimes some of them get annoyed with how much effort it takes.

Now that I live in MA, I've become at least as aggressive about recycling as my sister already was about 15 years ago. I understand much better the environmental impact of our waste, and how crucial it is for us to try to do our best. I will buy a different brand of the same product in the stores if the package is made from recycled material or is more easily recycled. I remind housemates when they throw away or are about to throw away something that could easily be tossed into the recycling bin instead. Since we have recycling pick-up with our trash once a week, it is practically hassle free to recycle, which makes it so much easier to actually do it.

The next step is composting, which I find a little bit harder without my own yard. Many of our friends compost, and it really does seem like a crucial way to decrease the amount of stuff sent to landfills. In Springfield, MA they recently instituted an additional bin for food waste that is picked up on the curb with the trash. I'm not sure how well it's working since I don't live there, but it's great that they are trying to take that step.

I really feel like where a person lives and the attitude toward reducing, reusing, and recycling in that area (as well as accessibility of recycling) makes a big difference toward how much that person participates. For me, both taking a resources geology class my last year at Virginia Tech and moving to MA really made the difference.

What do you think influences people on this issue? Do you have any other ways we should be trying to save the environment within the reduce/reuse/recycle strategy?

Twilight is my favorite time...

2008-10-20T22:38:00.004-04:00

Actually, Twilight is the title of one of my new favorite books! It's a YA novel by Stephanie Meyer that is being released as a movie this November. A friend of mine (the one I wrote about working on her MFA to write YA literature) has been gushing about this series for years, so this summer I bought the book and this past weekend I finally read it! It's an easy read (the vocabulary is accessible for 13 year olds, after all) and some parts are obviously meant to relate to people in their teen years, but it still drew me in quite easily.

There are two reasons I enjoyed this book so much: the characters, and the world definition. Edward is still on my mind this evening, he is so eloquent, knowledgeable, and fascinating. Bella is very entertaining, and actually a teenager I can somewhat relate to if I draw on the memories of my own teenage years. Both of those characters are incredibly intriguing, as are all of Edward's family. I LOVE the interactions that happen in this book among them all.

The world is one of my favorite types: everything occurs in our own world, but the twist is the definition of vampires and other "monsters" that exist. She redefines what it means to be a vampire, and how they interact with the human population. Of course, the sheer fact that there are vampires in the book immediately appealed to me; it's like a lighter version of Ann Rice, whose books I enjoyed when I actually was a teenager. It also reminds me of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that I've recently started watching in my "free time" (I never watched it when it was actually on TV).

I read 40% or so of it Friday night, and the rest Saturday night. Granted, we grad students have tons of work to do, so even though I stayed up really late I didn't sleep in much. But it was very worth it to finally read for fun again. I haven't read for fun in at least a month, and I haven't finished a book I was reading for fun in about a year (unless you count the audio books I listen to each time I have to drive down to VA and back). And of course the last time I finished a book that quickly was the first time I read the last Harry Potter book.

I hope to continue reading for an hour or so in the evenings this semester, not that I really have the time. I started Mists of Avalon so long ago I can't even remember the month or year, and it would be great to be able to give it back to my sister at some point. That's definitely another book I love, for similar reasons (more about that if I ever finish it!).

Then I'll definitely move on to the other 3 books in the Twilight series...

Wintry Confliction

2008-10-19T22:06:00.004-04:00

Right around this time every year I feel very conflicted about both winter and living in Massachusetts. If I was still in Virginia it would not be quite as cold yet, and the leaves would still be on all of the trees. I would have a longer time to wear autumn clothing as well; it's already too cold in the morning and evening to wear only a light jacket. I wouldn't be running the heat all evening and morning in addition to overnight, and the growing season wouldn't be as good as done. When I woke up in the morning the air outside of the covers wouldn't be so cold, so maybe I'd actually be willing to get out of bed.

Despite all of that though I do love winter in MA. I love waking up to a snow covered driveway, and layering on the covers at night. I'm always excited about a good excuse to drink hot drinks, so I consume a large amount of hot tea every day. I love snuggling under the blanket while watching TV in the evenings, and using a warm shower to warm up in the morning. I always wear layers anyway, so soon I can start layering with the sweaters that have been under my bed for about 5 months. I love being bundled to some extent.

I also love playing in the snow, and I love that we can still drive around after and while the snow is falling! Sure, the snow comes more often here than in VA, and we get more of it each time it falls as well, but still the roads are generally clear soon after it stops falling. People are also a lot less idiotic about how they are driving in the snow (for the most part).

Of course, clean roads mean school is never canceled. Usually I'm fine with that, but since I'm taking a 9AM class this semester it means I have to get up extra early when it snows to clean off my car and warm it up! That's of course going to be a problem every morning they don't call for snow and it snows anyway, as well as mornings where they call for snow and it doesn't happen. Either I end up not getting up early even though I need to clean off my car, or getting up early and then not needing to clean off my car! So I hope the snow stays away for most of the semester, because getting to school by 9AM is enough of a challenge for me without that extra 15-30 min of work!

At least in the winter our lab at school is too warm instead too cold; I can take off extra jacket layers instead of wrapping myself in a blanket as I work!

Thus, I have a conundrum. I wish it was warm outside, as it's just barely too cold most of the day for me to really want to sit outside. However, I also wish winter would hurry up and get here so I can wake up to a winter wonderland most mornings! But then again, I don't want to have to spend the time to clean pieces of that wonderland off of my car. Sheesh.

I wonder if Blacksburg was ideal as it's not as cold as MA, but you still get snow relatively often. Not to mention the bus system is good enough that I could just take the bus instead of cleaning off my car. Oh well, I gave it up to come to MA!

Grace Hopper Pictures

2008-10-08T14:57:00.006-04:00

Grace Hopper was such a fun conference, and to prove that I wanted to share a few pictures from the trip. First of all, as mentioned in a previous post, I ran into Jennifer, who I interned with in summer of 2007. She was a Google Anita Borg scholarship finalist this year, which I either had forgotten about or didn't know about until I saw it in the back of the GHC program! She is such a fun person, I'm so glad I got to see her again and get a picture with her! And hey...doesn't that look a lot like BJ behind us??

Also, would you believe that we had lots of dance parties at this conference if I didn't have photographic evidence? It really is a fun conference to attend; both Wednesday night and Friday night were essentially party nights this year. Friday night was sponsored by Google and Microsoft, giving away free t-shirts, a good dinner, and a DJ that encouraged lots of crazy dancing.

Of course, I can't leave out the scenery. There was tons of great scenery, and the few pictures I took will primarily be posted on Moments Caught on Film, but here is one of 3 of us the morning we were leaving for the airport. It was quite cold in Colorado, but I suppose it was just priming us for the next few weeks here in New England. Goodbye Colorado, we had fun!

It's good to be home, but it was fun!

2008-10-07T13:03:00.004-04:00

I really enjoyed Grace Hopper this year. Although I'm relieved to be home and able to work toward all the deadlines coming up, I can't wait for another chance to attend! I met so many great people in so many different career and life stages, learned some more about how to decide where to go with my own career, and had a great opportunity to present my research.

My favorite part of the conference was definitely the networking aspect. I wish there were more opportunities to talk; often I found myself rushing to the next session because the previous one went over, which keeps me from being able to talk more with those people in that session. I did however find some familiar faces that I hadn't seen in over a year! I found a friend Jen who I interned with at PNNL two summers ago, and had not talked to in many months. I also found Kristin, who I had met at the Google retreat for the Anita Borg Scholarship in 2006 and had vaguely kept in touch with through Facebook. Unfortunately many of the other people I met in 2006 at Google and at Grace Hopper were not at the conference this year. However, I met so many interesting new people that I didn't have much time to be sad about that. Hopefully we will all meet again next year, or some other future year.

For anyone wondering: I did not make it to the next stage of the Student Research Competition, but that's OK. I had a great time presenting my work in the poster session; a lot of people came to my poster, and many seemed to understand when they left it. I especially loved talking to the undergraduates, many of whom had no idea about my type of research when they stopped to talk, but most of whom grasped it very well by the end. It was great to be able to teach them about something new, that might help them later.

So, I've been incredibly exhausted since returning from the conference, but I still have so much more I'd like to say about it! Maybe I'll continue to post about GHC for the next week or so, in the "free time" I have between catching up on coursework, research, and paper writing. I actually needed a coffee to get through the day yesterday, which hasn't happened in at least a year...so we'll see how the week goes!

Environment and GHC Occasionally Collided

2008-10-06T00:39:00.004-04:00

On Friday Mary Lou Jepsen spoke about her experiences with the One Laptop per Child and her company Pixel Qi that she started to continue that work. Apparently then have shipped approximately 1 million laptops already. In one African country an 11 year old girl created a laptop hospital to fix the broken laptops for other kids, after figuring out how to fix them herself. The laptops come with 6 extra screws, as Mary had envisioned the laptop to be fixable by the children themselves. I think this anecdote is yet another that supports the idea that girls are just as likely to be interested in computers as boys, as long as you don't tell them they shouldn't be (implicitly or explicitly).

I was also impressed to hear how little power these laptops take, and that they can be charged with a bicycle, cows walking on a treadmill-like device, and other non-traditional energy sources. According to her graphs, if a large number of people began to use these laptops instead of their traditional laptops, we could save a significant amount of energy. The laptops have innovative power saving capabilities, as the screen is exceptional in its low power usage, and the hard drive and processors are turned off whenever they aren't being used even if the computer is still on. Any action by the user essentially turns them back on immediately, so the user doesn't really notice that anything was turned off. How cool is that?! These laptops have so many capabilities that it would be great to have on ALL laptops!

Not only do I love that there is such an innovative laptop, I also love how environmentally friendly the use of it is. I wonder, of course, how environmentally friendly the actual development of the device is compared to other laptops. I hope that one day we can make computing have a much lower environmental impact, and maybe this laptop is a step in the right direction. Any guesses on how long that will take?

On a related note, GHC was overall much more environmentally friendly than usual. Every attendee was given a reusable plastic water bottle and encouraged to use that instead of plastic cups throughout the event. ThoughtWorks gave out organic cotton paper that when planted will bloom flowers, NetApp gave away organic chapstick, the free Microsoft t-shirt was made with organic cotton, and overall a lot less "stuff" was given away. Although it's always fun getting stuff, we really don't need it. There were even bins at the conference center for attendees to place any unwanted free stuff, that would then be donated to local schools. I think it's great that the organizers took the time to try to be more responsible toward the environment, and I hope the trend continues for future conferences.

Mary Lou Jepsen's thoughts on being a women in Technology

2008-10-03T13:48:00.004-04:00

On Friday Mary Lou Jepsen spoke about her experiences with the One Laptop per Child and her company Pixel Qi, but she also gave suggestions on how to approach being a woman in computing. She quoted Gloria Steinem as saying "Sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was." Although the quote was initially referring to Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama, it still applies that often gender is the most limiting factor in equality today. Personally, I hope we can work to change this for the next generation.

She said that you should always negotiate before accepting an offer, because it helps them think of you as a good negotiator and then they'll give you better jobs later on. Getting that extra little bit is important in the beginning (before accepting an offer is your best chance for the next 2 years to make a change like that), but letting them know you'll negotiate is possibly more important.

She reminded us all not to give up too easily as well. She claims that getting your degree (PhD, if relevant) is very important as well. Although we see men who have succeeded very well without finishing their degrees, we don't really see women in that position. Having the degree will give you that extra believability, and make it harder for people to discount your ideas and criticisms. This is important more for women than it is for men, due to that inadvertent/invisible/unacknowledged sexism problem.

The biggest point and my favorite point is that it all boils down to confidence. When she was taking testosterone, her entire world view changed. She suddenly thought of herself as the smartest person in the world, she was always angry, and she was always thinking about sex. Nothing was different in her life but the testosterone. She feels that these feelings came from the same place as the self-doubt without the testosterone came from: being unsure about herself. Although the story is funny, it also points out that quite often the same feelings manifest themselves different ways in the different genders. What she wants everyone to learn from her experience is that when a guy is giving this type of attitude, stand up to him; he's not any more sure that his idea will work than you are that your idea will work. Don't let that type of attitude stop you, know that it means that you have a good chance of winning if you don't give up. I think this is advice that many women in technology really need to hear, as often the biggest barrier to success is dealing with the people who seem to want to put you down no matter what.

Her last piece of advice is to give credit to others, and stand up to take credit of your own work as well. If you give credit, people are more likely to believe you deserve the credit you ask for. Take advantage of the fact that you'll be easier to remember because you look different than the millions of guys in your position, and that companies will be more likely to remember you; so if you do something good, that reputation will last well.

GHC Keynote Fran Allen on Diversity

2008-10-03T11:20:00.006-04:00

Both of the keynote speakers at GHC have been very interesting. On Thursday we were honored by hearing Francis Allen, the first woman to win the Turing Award (the highest award in the computing field). I actually had the honor of meeting Fran Allen on the shuttle ride from the Denver Airport to the Keystone resort. She's a great lady, and definitely has strong opinions about where the field of computing is going as well as the state of women in our field. Although she spoke primarily of technical aspects of the field during her talk, she also spoke on her beliefs about the reason the number of women in computing dropped, based on her experiences in the field. Apparently, in the 1960's the field of computing started to become a major at universities and was based out of engineering departments. Well, engineering departments were primarily male, so suddenly women who were entering computing from other fields were blocked from entry as they didn't have the engineering knowledge that was suddenly defined as necessary. So by the 1970's the number of women had dropped in the field, and the glass ceiling started to exist.

This is a view of the problem that I've never heard before, and find very interesting. For everyone who actually thinks that women don't belong in computing or aren't capable of being in computing, this could finally convince them they are wrong. Not only are women now a large number of engineers graduating each year (I believe it's around 50%), which proves that we are capable of being engineers, it also proves that women have always been interested and the reason they left is that they were pushed out by sudden strict requirements. Of course, these are things that most of us believe anyway, but maybe a true history of the changes in computing would help remind everyone that men are not automatically better at it, they just shaped the field in a way that preferred them at the time. We have bigger problems to look at too, like visibility and perception of computing, but if we can work on increasing everyone's knowledge of how our field became defined it may help the rest of our work as well.

My favorite quote from her talk is that she is "both honored and concerned" about being the first woman to win the Turing Award. If you want to read about the technical aspects of her talk & her views on awards, the GHC Wiki page on her keynote has lots of details (written by me!).

It's almost time for GHC!

2008-09-29T10:35:00.007-04:00

In a few days I'll be traveling to Colorado to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). The only other time I've been able to attend was in 2006, so it's great to be returning! The picture above is from that trip, during Sponsor Night, where we gets lots of free stuff from companies, and basically spend the evening having fun!

GHC is a conference primarily for women in computing, although men are welcome to attend as well (only a handful do each year). There are many goals of the conference: bring women together, support women in computing, share tips on finding success, and share research results. It's a fun conference, although many serious topics are discussed. One of the most exciting reasons to attend is to see so many women in one place that all have careers (or future careers) in computing!

I'm participating in the ACM Student Research Competition this year, and I think I have a good shot to at least make it to the next round at GHC. My research is solid, my poster is beautiful (although the poster printer did mess up a subtitle that's fine in the file I printed from...), and I think I've figured out how to describe 3 years worth of work in 5 minutes. We'll see if the judges agree, but I'm ready to be there and go for it! The poster session is Wednesday night (I really hope I don't get a migraine from flying), and everyone who is chosen to move on will give a 10 minute oral presentation Thursday evening.

I met a lot of great women at GHC 2006, so I hope to reconnect with them as well as make some new acquaintances. There's even this new CONNECT project, that allows participants to scan their badges when they meet someone new, and then they'll each get an e-mail with the other person's contact information! It's supposed to make it easier so that you don't have to use business cards. I've still got my business cards ready though, do you?

Pandora -- A way to Happiness

2008-09-25T14:21:00.004-04:00

I know that for many people Pandora is old news. I've always thought it was a neat idea, but for some reason I only recently started using it regularly. Now that I use it, I think it's great!

For those that don't know, it's an internet radio website that will create a station for you based on your preferences. The people who run the website listen to music and characterize it (supposedly by "400 distinct characteristics"), and those characteristics are used to determine what music you might like based on what songs you've marked as "good" in the past. This is done from radio station to radio station, so you can mark that you don't like a song for a specific station you've created, but it could still show up on a different station.

One of the reasons I love Pandora is that I can create a station based on a single song I love, and then it'll play other songs it thinks are similar. If I don't think the song is good, I mark is negatively, and it readjusts. Since my music tastes are very varied, this is a great way to find new artists I like with little effort. I've already bought a few songs from iTunes that I found on Pandora! Not to mention that I've discovered the names and artists of songs I've heard before and liked, but never could have easily found.

The only downside is that they only have but so much music. There have been a few songs I really wanted to use as the seed to create a station that they didn't have. There is also a newer band I love that I wanted to use as a seed to see what other artists are similar to them, but they didn't have them either. However, all of the other stations have been great, I was even able to make one based on a song by a Japanese artist!

If you've never tried Pandora, you should check it out. If you already use it, please share your username so that we can share stations! I'd love to see what types of stations you guys are making (what few of you there are). You can see my Pandora profile here, my username is vtmegan.

Happy Listening!

Getting a "good job" -- advice for the graduating PhD student

2008-09-23T17:00:00.004-04:00

A graduate student that I considered to be very smart and toward the top of her field recently graduated with her PhD (I won't say from what university or what year, given that there are only but so many of us). I've always wanted my research to be as exceptional as hers. Well, I found out a few weeks ago that she had only received 2 job offers (for academic positions) after she had interviewed! At the time she was interviewing I knew that she had received an offer from an overseas institution that she had decided to turn down due to distance; but I had assumed that she must have had many offers in the US! Turns out she only had 1 other offer, at a relatively unknown school (I assume university, but it may be a college).

This revelation was quite shocking for me (despite the fact of how out-of-the-loop I have been to have only recently learned about this)! Here is this great researcher and student, who ends up accepting a position much below her capabilities. Do any of the rest of us even stand a chance at being hired when we graduate??

Well, talking to others that knew her better, I found out that there is a very likely reason for why this happened: letters of recommendation. Apparently, she defended her thesis AFTER she completed her job search. At the end of her defense her committee were all pleasantly surprised at how astounding her contribution was to her field. From what I hear, it is likely that the letters were not as strong as they would have been had she defended before they were written.

So, the lesson of the day: Defend your thesis BEFORE you go on the job search, even if it could mean 1 more year in grad school. You may get better letters of recommendation, which can make your final set of employment choices much better!

(Although I tagged this as pertaining to women, it pertains to ALL graduate students)

GOP proves the point that Obama was trying to make

2008-08-26T11:06:00.002-04:00

I watched the DNC on primetime last night, which basically covered Michelle Obama's speech and not much more. I enjoyed the speech though, and I think she got across a lot of what she supposedly wanted to: that they are normal people living the American dream, that they can relate to the average American, and will make changes in Washington for the better.

I read through a few commentaries about the speech this morning online, and one of the articles on CNN caught my eye. In this article, we basically read excerpts from comments made by GOP members about the first day of the DNC. Ironically, their criticisms actually brought out the points Michelle Obama was trying to make. For one, Ben Stein said that she was nothing special in the fact that she's a mother, and had a sick father. Exactly the point! She wanted people to realize that she understands their struggles because they are her struggles as well.

Other Republicans commented that the theme of change is the same one the Democrats have been spouting since the 1960's. Well, I do believe that progress is a main focus for the Democratic party. We don't believe in the status quo as being the right way by default, especially because there are so many people that struggle to make ends meet, or to get their fair chance. Once we make it possible for everyone to live a decent life, and break down racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other ways that Americans try to make others sub-human, then maybe change won't be necessary. But there are still so many major changes that need to be made, of course it is still a major theme!

I suspect the fact that the Republicans are saying that the American people should "rely on more than convention speeches" is a good sign: it shows that so far the speeches have been strong, and well done. I'm looking forward to the rest of them this week!

Goodbye, Olympics!

2008-08-25T14:24:00.004-04:00

I'm so sad to see the Olympics end; I really enjoyed watching so many sports! Fortunately I had the mental strength to avoid watching all day long and mainly watched prime time coverage (except for watching fencing online, indoor volleyball during the day, and some other online clips)! If you didn't see the Opening Ceremony, you must find a copy of it somewhere! It was gorgeous, much as one would expect from Zhang Yimou, who directed both the opening and closing ceremonies. I love his movies for their artistic elements, so seeing his creative genius in a live performance was fantastic (I wish I had been there!).

The Closing Ceremony was equally pretty, but obviously not as elaborate as it was shorter. I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the British part of the closing ceremony though. It wasn't as pleasant to watch or hear, although I think that may partially be due to the television feed. I thought the hand-off to the Brits was done in an interesting way, but the level of artistry seemed much lower than we've seen in the rest of the Beijing performances. I hope that London has a more artsy opening/closing ceremony in 2012 than it appears they will; I won't bother to watch if it's just music celebrities performing.

The good thing about the Olympics ending is now I can be a better grad student and spend more time doing work! I was definitely not the only one here who spent extra time in front of the TV (even some of my grad student housemates that rarely if ever watch TV watched much of the Olympics), but that doesn't help the work get finished. To my credit though, I did do some mindless research-related tasks while watching some of the primetime coverage!

Well, good job athletes, I look forward to seeing you on TV again in 4 years!

Dr. Horrible, fencing champion!

2008-08-12T14:00:00.002-04:00

Have you seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog? If not, you really must! You can watch it for free at that website, or you can download it from iTunes for $5. It's a show created during the writer's strike as an alternative to using the big name studios, and has only been released on the internet. The main character is played by Neil Patrick Harris, with other major characters played by Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion.

The plot revolves around Dr. Horrible's attempt to join the Evil League of Evil, his love for Penny, and his nemesis Captain Hammer. Much of the plot occurs via song, as it is indeed a musical. Very entertaining!

So why do I call him a fencing champion in my title? Well, I swear that his outfit looks much like fencing gear! For the first few minutes of the show you only see the top half of him, and his jacket looks almost identical to a fencing jacket. Similar material, similar fastening, and similar fit. Once you see a full length shot you can tell that it's a much longer jacket than would be worn in fencing, but it seems vaguely inspired by it. His gloves however, are definitely fencing gloves. They look exactly like a very commonly used brand of glove (similar to ones seen here, with a blue "grippy" material on the hand. I hear many people have been trying to replicate the costume; use fencing gear! The gloves especially are quite cheap, the jacket not so much....but if you're like me and have it lying around under your bed, it could be a good use for it!

Tornado in MA??

2008-08-09T17:22:00.003-04:00

Although we've had a lot of crazy weather lately, I was definitely not expecting to hear of a tornado warning here in Massachusetts. I actually missed the warning as I was on vacation in Maine (posts about that soon!), but my housemate told me about it when I got back last night. Tornado warning! That is definitely not something I have ever expected to experience anywhere that I've lived, much less here.

Apparently, however, MA ranks number 35 in states for tornado frequency, according to the Disaster Center website. This website also states that MA has an average of 3 tornadoes per year, based on data from 1950-1995. Since this was my first tornado warning since moving here (at least that I'm aware of), I supposed that means many of these tornadoes do not happen in this area (we are in a mountainous region, after all).

Finding the Virginia webpage from the same site, however, shows that it has an average of 6 tornadoes a year and is ranked number 29. I remember one tornado/strong storm from when I was in middle school. The other storms I remember were not quite tornado strength, although we did have to go into the basement for many of them.

Well, I suppose tornadoes are not exactly something I should fret about, considering that I've moved to a state with fewer of them, and I've only really experienced 1 in VA. Still, I hope we don't have any more tornado watches or warnings any time soon, especially since our only real warning system is weather.com.

Olympics are almost here!!!

2008-07-30T16:19:00.004-04:00

I'm so excited about the Olympics!! I love playing sports, watching sports, and wishing I was to that level in sports! This year they are showing TONS of events online, so even if your favorite sport isn't shown on TV you can still watch!

This momentous change is great for me, as my favorite sport is fencing. I fenced in college, and ever since have been frustrated with how little we see on TV. During the last Olympics they did at least show the semifinal and final rounds in sabre (which was my weapon), which is better than nothing. This year it appears that is all they are showing as well, but at least now I can watch more of it online anyway!

Of course, the bummer is that I'm out of town during the sabre final, which will be shown at 2AM! What horrible luck. Last time I believe it was at least shown at a decent time (although then it wasn't live). I wonder if my friends will want to stay up until 2AM to watch fencing on TV? Somehow I doubt it.

But still, I'm excited. I suspect I will be able to find the events online somewhere after they happen, even if it's not via the NBC website. I noticed via Windows Media Center that they will have channels that allow you to watch Olympic events after they have happened (so not live). I don't how much it costs (or if it costs) to subscribe to that, but it may end up being worth it. I don't understand how other people can not care about the Olympics at all, I'm already giddy with excitement and it's still a week away!

Another big problem is the Olympic opening is during a concert I was planning to attend. I think I might still go to the concert, but it's actually a hard decision!

Lauren's Wedding

2008-07-25T11:02:00.000-04:00

A month after Jaclyn's wedding we had Lauren's wedding. It's been a busy summer! I was not, however, in this wedding until about a week before when I was asked to be the candle lighter. That's a job I've never had before!

The first activity of the weekend was of course the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. Fabulous speeches were given by family and friends, hilarious and adorable photos were shown, and delicious food was served. We were also given fun favors, including paper crowns we were expected to wear for the duration of the event.

The next morning we had a bridal luncheon for all of the female relatives and bridal party. It was hosted by my grandmother, aunt, and cousin (who was a bridesmaid) at Lauren's parents' house. The food was all fabulous, with a nice variety of cold, hot, salty, and sweet. Probably the most exciting event of the morning was the hemming of my cousin's dress (the very pregnant maid-of-honor), as it had only come in from the store a few days before the wedding. Luckily it was finished in time!

The wedding was great, partially because the minister joked some about Lauren and Alex (the groom), and thus the overall feeling was light-hearted. Yes, it was a serious wedding in the fact that they are serious about their devotion to each other and God, but it was not as serious feeling as many of the other weddings I've been to the past few years. It probably didn't hurt either that the "Imperial March" from Star Wars was played after they were introduced as "Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong" at the end of the ceremony.

After the wedding, the reception was held at a local museum. There was delicious food, and very entertaining dancing. For instance, many of my relatives danced to Thriller as a surprise for the bride, which they practiced for about a month. Did I mention that the garter retrieval was also done to music from Jaws?

Lauren and Alex are both very expressive people, and thus help us take many great photos. They can be quite a pair of goofs, which is one of the reasons it was so fun to be at their wedding!

Thunderstorms -- one of my favorite things

2008-07-23T13:52:00.003-04:00

I love thunderstorms, I think they are fun to watch. I've never lived anywhere that had frequent thunderstorms, so they have always been a treat. Ironically, we have had thunderstorms almost every night for the past week. Actually, this entire summer has given us more thunderstorms than I've experienced since moving to MA three years ago. It seems that almost every day the Weather Channel calls for thunderstorms, although they don't always happen.

Friday I enjoyed a thunderstorm from the covered balcony of a restaurant, Saturday a thunderstorm ruined the outdoor plans for my party, and Tuesday it canceled our playoff softball game against the #1 seed. It looks as though storms will also cancel volleyball practice today (we play outside), and quite possibly the re-scheduled softball game tomorrow.

The heavy rain we received last night actually flooded our department's first floor! The atrium, the conference rooms, and classrooms all had an inch or two of water in them. There is a single lab on the first floor, but they were far enough away from the water entry-point that they were spared. However, we are expected an afternoon and evening full of rain again today, so they may not be OK this time! It's rather scary to think that your research or electronics could be ruined due to rain in an area that is not prone to floods.

Hopefully I can continue to enjoy thunderstorms this summer without it causing too much damage. I don't know if it's global warming or some other phenomena that's screwing with our weather, but for the moment I mostly enjoy it. If we're lucky no more problems will come from it all.

Why the outrage?

2008-07-22T15:47:00.003-04:00

According to CNN.com, people are outraged that there will be pro-Islam posters on New York City subway trains in September. The ads are very simple black and white ads with a simple phrase related to Islam, and a web address where you can find out more about the religion. The dates were chosen to correspond with one of their holy holidays.

Why are people so against this idea? One man claimed it was due to the fact that one of the backers may have been involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. This man has not been sent to trial or convicted, however. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? It seems that as long as the website is promoting the religion and not extremism then the ads should be fine.

The point that the ads would be up during the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy was also used. Does that really matter though? Extremists and terrorists were behind that event. Granted, many (or all?) of them can be linked to Islam. But does that mean that all Muslims are terrorists? NO! If people get worried during the anniversary because there is a simple add asking you to learn more about Islam, then that is their own narrow-minded problem. I see no reason for the city of New York to keep a religious group from simple advertising. They should keep the ads up specifically for this reason, to make people think twice about stereotyping and fearing an entire religion.

Computer Problems

2008-07-22T15:08:00.003-04:00

Back in June, my Dell Inspiron E1405 stopped working. Just plain wouldn't turn on. No whirring of the fan, no starting of the harddrive, no sound at all when the power button was pushed. As some of you may remember, I am absolutely in love with that laptop. I loved the media buttons and speaker on the front edge, I loved the gray and white combination that so many other people hate, and I loved the photo sticker I put on the cover.

So, of course, we spent a good deal of time taking it apart and trying to figure out what was wrong. We tried so many things, including trying with and without battery and A/C power, pushing the button below the button you see on the laptop, taking RAM out and putting it back in, using a multimeter to test if power was being sent, etc. It was fun to take the thing apart, so I had to share some pictures. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from when it was completely apart. All pictures were taken with the camera on my phone, but I think they came out rather well anyway.

In the end, we were not able to fix it. It appears that the motherboard is dead. How annoying! Luckily, my officemate has a harddrive dock that lets you plug it in to another computer via USB. So at least I had all of my files at my fingertips, which is the more important thing.

I searched for awhile for another laptop of the same model that I could just stick my harddrive in and call it a day. The cheapest I could find was $600, but for all I knew that motherboard would die in the next year as well! So that entire search was quite frustrating. I tried to get people to sell the laptop to me without most of the pieces (like no memory, harddrive, optical drive) since I already had those and they worked, but no one was interested.

Happy Birthday to me!

2008-07-21T11:29:00.006-04:00

I just celebrated by 25th birthday this weekend! Although we had planned an outdoor event, a short thunderstorm managed to soak everything enough to halt those plans. It was still fun though! We made some stuffed mushrooms; bought some fruit, hummus, chips, and salsa; and mixed up a few delicious sangrias!

I also made myself a chocolate cake, with raspberry filling between the layers. I cooked two layers but cut them in half to make four shorter ones.

The real frustration was icing the cake. It was so hot and humid all day, that the icing would just fall off! I ended up freezing both the cake and the icing (thank goodness our freezer was only half full) so that the icing would be thick enough to stay in place. This did, however, mean that I had to ice in batches, as the icing warmed up rather quickly. Usually no A/C is not a huge problem, but for decorating this cake it was a big issue!

The cake turned out well enough though, I finished decorating it about 30 minutes before everyone was supposed to arrive. Everyone was impressed with the decorations (I just used a piping tip, and sprinkles for the blue inside flowers), and said it tasted delicious. I think the tartness of the raspberry really did give a nice contrast to the chocolate. yum!

Powerful and Energy Efficient go Hand in Hand

2008-07-17T15:44:00.003-04:00

There is apparently a list called "Green500" that ranks supercomputers based on their energy efficiency, as I read about in this article: The Green500 List: Good things come in threes. According to the article, the world's current fasted super computer named Roadrunner is also the third most energy efficient!

It's really great to see that we are making progressing in decreasing the energy consumption of computing. These energy savings are apparently due at least in some part to IBM's BladeCenter QS22.

Hopefully technology can continue to become more environmentally friendly, but this success seems like a great step in the right direction.

Stimulus Package

2008-07-14T12:58:00.003-04:00

Someone I know recently received her economic stimulus check from the government. She is married, and they have a 1 year old daughter. They are currently living off of the husband's salary only, use WIC to help pay for groceries and their daughter's needs (diapers, food), and have debts they are trying to pay down (he brought credit card debt to the marriage, she brought student loan debt).

One would think that the stimulus payment was really meant for them; they need it more than most people I know. That money would go to bills and debt payments. But when they received the check, it was not for the full amount! They were given the full $300 for their daughter, but because they don't make enough money they were not given the full $600 each.

This knowledge makes me think about the point of this stimulus package. Obviously, it's not meant to help people who really need it, who are struggling even though they do their best. They always worry about money like this not being used; but of course people with low incomes will use it! They can't afford to save money, everything has to go to something. It's so sad that people who need it aren't getting as much as those who could easily live without.

I know that people who make over a certain amount receive a smaller check, but I still find it shocking that low income families also receive less money than the middle class.

Jaclyn's Wedding

2008-06-26T21:06:00.002-04:00

Over the past 3 months, I have attended 3 weddings each of which have been 4 weeks apart. The first of these weddings was the Harmon-Bell wedding, for my cousin Jaclyn to marry her high school sweetheart Jon. He proposed to her right before they graduated from college in 2007, but that's a story for her to tell herself.

I was lucky enough to be asked to be a bridesmaid in her wedding, along with my sister, our other two female cousins, and two of Jaclyn's friends. I love the color green she chose for our dresses; it was a great color for a spring wedding in the South!

Jaclyn and Jon of course are a very adorable couple, even if my housemates think they look like kids on their engagement announcement picture (sorry Jaclyn!). Of course, the differing opinions between the Northeast and Southeast on the right age to get married is a topic for an entirely different post.

Their rehearsal, wedding, and reception were quite beautiful though. Everyone had a great time, even those in the "under 5 years old" category. There was the electric slide which has been played at every family wedding in my generation, a delicious buffet, a chocolate fountain, wine punch (my aunt made them add extra wine), and the joy of celebration. Not to mention the wonderfully warm April weather.

One down, two more to go!

Early bird catches the worm

2008-06-23T16:48:00.003-04:00

This morning was not exactly my favorite of mornings. I returned last night from the last of the 3 weddings of early summer, then had the alarm set for 6AM to take Tim to the bus stop for a ride to Boston for a conference this week. Mother Nature, however, decided that 6:00 was much too late for waking up, and thus sent a very loud thunderstorm from 5:00 - 5:45. Needless to say, not much sleeping happened after 5:00.

When we left the house a bit before 7, we noticed that there were a bunch of little white worms that looked like larvae climbing up the stairs to our door. I wish I had taken a picture, but we were in too much of a rush to think about it. It was a bit freaky though; they were climbing vertically up the stairs, the railing, and were even ringing the top of the trash can. It looked like they were mounting war against us!

When I returned a bit after 7, I expected to see them covering the front door as well. However, I instead saw a robin standing on our trash can, and then leaping on to the railing when I parked. There were no worms in sight except for the one in its beak. After I registered what had just happened, the robin flew away.

Thank you, early bird.

Jane Austen -- finally I understand the hype!

2008-06-18T15:06:00.003-04:00

I've been hearing for years how much everyone loves Jane Austen's books, but I had never read them. Now, I have still not read them, but I have finally watched three related movies: Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, and Becoming Jane.

I absolutely loved these movies, although I loved Becoming Jane the least. Since that movie is about a fictional version of her life, I guess it shows that she was better at creating good stories than the writers for her pseudo-biography. For Sense & Sensibility though, I watched it twice in 2 days, which is something I very rarely do with movies. I would have happily done the same with Pride & Prejudice if I had the time when I rented it.

These movies really entertain me because they are not only interesting, but they also create a tangled mess of relationships that is slowly sorted out by the end. Of course I had my suspicions on how everyone would end up, but I could not have guessed the paths that would lead them there. The characters were extremely engaging, most likely due to how different they were from each other (both female and male characters). There were also strong female characters, who always keep me engaged. As far as movies based on love lives of a group of people go, these are much deeper than most newer movies.

If you haven't seen these movies, I definitely recommend that you at least see Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility. After you have watched them, if you are hungry for the same type of movie, then by all means watch Becoming Jane, but don't expect as intertwined of a plot as exists with the other two.

JK Rowling Gives Harvard Commencement Speech

2008-06-16T11:16:00.004-04:00

Sorry, I'm a little behind on the news it seems! But perhaps not all of you have seen this speech yet.

Both the video and transcript of her speech

Today I ran across a link to the speech that J.K. Rowling gave at Harvard's commencement this spring. Among other things, this speech gives insight into why her characters are the way that they are, and why the evil characters are evil in the ways that they are. It seems that she values empathy and compassion above many things, mostly due to her experiences working at Amnesty International while in college. It was great to see the speech that she gave, both because it echoed many of the thoughts I have had over the past few years and because it helped give insight into who she is besides the author of the Harry Potter books.

Movie: Sex and the City

2008-06-15T11:48:00.003-04:00

Last week I went with a few female friends to see the Sex and the City movie. I was never a big fan of the show, mostly because I have never had HBO, although one of Tim's housemates used to watch it regularly so I watched a few episodes with him the last few years. Thanks to that I at least knew the characters and what the show is about.

One of the people I went to the movie with was an avid fan of the show when it was on originally, so she explained much of the backstory after the movie. However, I was never lost throughout the entire movie and actually enjoyed it! Although knowing the backstory made the movie a little more rich in plot, I think it stands fine by itself. Granted, it was not one of the best movies I have ever seen, but it was not the worst either. It was entertaining despite some cliche lines and the obsession with certain clothing brands, especially as it really hit home on the fact that strong independent women sometimes do want what less career driven women desire as well (such as marriage, a nice wedding, etc).

One of my favorite aspects of the movie is that the personal assistant Louise the main character hires halfway through is an African-American female Computer Scientist (played by Jennifer Hudson)!! Not only is she portrayed as smart (she fixes the main character's website, is able to organize her life, and gets the main character back on her feet), but she is also beautiful, and interested in "girly" things like fashion. With so few women and African American computer scientists, I hope that this character helps to subconsciously remind girls and women that they too can succeed in our field. Too bad she wasn't doing something stronger computer-wise (websites can be fairly basic when compared to other types of computer work). It's also sad that she was one of the few non-white characters in the entire movie, but I suppose that is something for someone else to write about.

Overall, it was entertaining and fun to watch, even if it was a weakly done chic flick.

College Kid, hmmm?

2008-06-10T00:09:00.000-04:00

I was recently reminded that it is typical for people who understand the reality of some experience to view it much differently than those who merely look in on it. Although after living in some world (such as grad school) for many years, it can be easy to forget how others view one's own world.

To me, graduate school (for computer science at least) is defined by learning and working at the same time, although those two parts can be both symbiotic and in conflict. Graduate school is mostly about research, with the most useful learning not coming from classes but from reading papers, interacting with other researchers, and working. Not only are graduate students learning some small part of their field in detail, they are also beginning their careers by publishing their work, attending conferences, and networking. In a sense, graduate school is almost an apprenticeship where in the end no job is guaranteed, but is still likely to be found. Graduate students are often living their lives as normal adults, sometimes with families but often without, participating in their community, taking vacations, etc. The only main differences between graduate school and an industry job are that graduate school pays substantially less, expects you to work longer hours more frequently, and has more flexibility overall. We don't even pay tuition at many schools, but instead it is waived.

I have recently been reminded however, that many people who have not attended graduate school themselves view it more as "being in college again." As far as I can tell, it is viewed as following the college/university model very closely with just harder classes than are taken at the undergraduate level. As you have hopefully gathered from my previous paragraph, this is very far from the truth in Computer Science! Yes, it can be close to the truth in other disciplines, but even in liberal arts programs the graduate students still take fewer classes than undergraduates, have some form of stipend that pays them to work for the department in some capacity, and usually do some form of research at some point in the program. For instance, I know in Mathematics graduate students generally focus on classes for the first few years and are only then ready to actively participate in research.

I think it's also important to note that there is a different focus in graduate school than in undergraduate education. As an undergrad, one usually learns a very broad range of information including general education requirements. Students learn a large amount of background knowledge that could be necessary in their future careers. In graduate school, this background knowledge is of course assumed, and thus graduate students focus on the area they are most interested in pursuing. More is expected of students overall, as only truly interested and motivated students ttend graduate school (although of course many people who are as interested and motivated in the field choose not to attend).

The department's building is the graduate student's place of work, their work community, and often practically seems like a second home (as sad as that is). Graduate students are generally on a first-name basis with professors, and their opinions are generally valued. Graduate students are often the mentors or teachers for undergraduate students, which may be why grad students often call undergraduates "kids" when talking with other graduate students, even when they are almost the same age. Or maybe we call them "kids" because after a few years of graduate school it's hard to remember being "so juvenile" or "so lost."

Personally, I think at my school the biggest difference is that many undergraduate kids are noisy, obnoxious, and inconsiderate of other people. But then again, I suspect the graduate students at my alma mater probably feel the same about their undergrads.

But either way, do try to remember when talking to graduate students that they have done their time in college and have moved on. They are usually no longer living the college lifestyle except for the fact that they may live in a college town and don't make very much money. They are career focused, independent, and soon to be college/university professors teaching "those pesky college kids."

Richland WA - Desert or Not?

2008-06-04T17:44:00.000-04:00

I spent last summer in Richland, WA. For the record, this is not near Seattle! It is actually across the mountains in the eastern part of the state, where it is much more arid. From what I understand, it was originally desert but has been irrigated enough over the years to now be able to support plants (such as trees and grass). It is part of the Tri-Cities area, which also includes Pasco and Kennewick.

There are many great reasons to go to Richland, besides working at PNNL (my reason for moving there). Many of the roads are extra wide so there is plenty of room for bikes, making it very easy to bike around town. There is also a fabulous (paved) bike path down the Columbia river that has just enough hills to make it interesting without being too tiring. Downtown there is a place that serves afternoon tea in a Victorian setting, there are craft fairs during the summer, and cherries are both very cheap and very tasty for most of the summer. Not to mention that there are many local wineries, at least one of which has a very delicious restaurant with homemade cheese (among other foods).

Richland is also fabulous for its wildlife. There are birds, deer, and coyotes (supposedly they were around PNNL in the evening but I never saw one) to name a few. In July I went on an afternoon river tour, where I saw most of the wildlife in the area. We also saw a few orchards and farms growing on the slopes near the river. The tour was fabulous as it started in the afternoon (bright sun) allowing us to see great scenery, and then ended around sunset, allowing us to see that same scenery become transformed into another beautiful setting.

In the summer it rarely rains in Richland; it rained twice while I was there, once was a light sprinkling and the other was actual rain for less than a day in August. Despite the incredibly hot temperatures, this makes the summer quite enjoyable as long as you believe in sunscreen, drinking water, and A/C. If you get a chance to go there, I highly recommend it.

A new writer to keep in mind

2008-06-03T19:32:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine from undergraduate is about to finish her MFA degree (Masters of Fine Arts) in children's literature. I've had the pleasure to "beta-read" what is likely to be her first young adult fiction book, which is also part of her Masters thesis. The current title of the book is Arion, and I have to say that it is absolutely fabulous. This book is in the fantasy genre, so she has created her own world in addition to her own characters, plot, etc. It's so amazing reading a book that is so well done when I personally know the author!

I would love to share a link with you, but she is still in progress on making her website. However, I can tell you that her name is Kathleen Foucart, and as soon as she has a published book I will be posting again to let you know! She is definitely going to be a great writer if you can appreciate YA books, and I'm not just saying that because I know her!

Surprise!!!.....Surprise!!!

2008-06-02T21:00:00.000-04:00

On May 17th we threw a great double-layered surprise party for a fellow graduate student (her boyfriend, another graduate student, actually organized it). Her birthday was that day, but as both her and her boyfriend were traveling to a conference the next day, they decided to just celebrate the following weekend (or so she thought). However, her boyfriend had actually organized a group of us to meet them at a local restaurant for dinner (her favorite restaurant that they frequently eat at). The eight of us managed to get there about 10 minutes before they arrived, and they managed to get into the restaurant before it started pouring rain. When they walked in and saw us, she was so surprised I don't think it registered for a few seconds that we were eating with them. Before they got to our table though she was all smiles and saying how she couldn't believe it. She was actually very surprised, which is amazing because many of our friends have had surprise birthday parties/dinners organized by their significant others in the past year. According to her, her boyfriend is very bad at planning this type of thing, which made it even more surprising for her as she'd never expect it.

I had also posted on her facebook wall earlier that day wishing her a happy birthday and asking if she had any plans. I also suggested that we go to one of the local bars if she didn't have plans to celebrate. Right before they left for dinner she responded to me (I found this out at dinner as I had already left at that point) saying that they were not celebrating until the following weekend. I wish I had a picture of her face when she remembered this wall post during dinner, she was both amused and mad all at the same time. I think she said something like "YOU!!!" while pointing at me (I was sitting right across from her). It was so hilarious seeing her so mad at being duped so well.

The best part of the entire thing though is that dinner was only a decoy. The ACTUAL surprise was karaoke after dinner (as discussed in my previous post). Her boyfriend had organized us so that less than half of the group came to dinner, and everyone else went straight to karaoke. So of course the next challenge was to get her to the karaoke place. Luckily we are all conniving individuals, and through suggesting and shooting down other ideas for awhile toward the end of dinner we actually tricked her into suggesting karaoke herself! As I am not a fan of karaoke I protested at first (otherwise it would have been way too suspicious!), but was eventually "convinced" by her that we should go there.

When we arrived at the karaoke place, she waited for my car to get there as we were the last ones out of the restaurant parking lot and I had told her we didn't know where to go (only partially true). This gave everyone else a chance to get inside and find out what room the rest of our group was hiding in. My labmate's wife stayed out front and pointed us to which room we were going to have, and my labmate opened the door so that the birthday girl could enter before him. The lights were out and two birthday cakes had candles lit on them. She just stood in the doorway so I gently pushed her in since I was right behind her, and everyone started singing "Happy Birthday." She then blew out her candles, and we told the people there that we had managed to make her suggest karaoke at dinner, which then again caused her to be "mad" at us one more time. Although everyone knew she was really just incredibly delighted.

She sent us all an e-mail a few days later, here is a shortened and edited (names removed) version:

Dear friends,
...I want to thank you all for being a part of what may have been the most awesome birthday party ever. I had an amazing time! Special thanks go to [her boyfriend] for being a sweetheart and planning such an incredible evening, those of you who helped him organize it (for some reason I don't really know who did what :p), and all of you for coming!

It would be understatement to say I was surprised. If I looked annoyed, it was simply because I couldn't believe how [her boyfriend] managed to keep it all a secret and how you all tricked me, but it was a good annoyed :). ...

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much!

Karaoke...?!?....Suuuuuuuuure....

2008-05-20T11:00:00.001-04:00

I've been against karaoke basically my entire life. I don't consider myself a good singer, and rarely if ever sing around other people. The one time I sang karaoke was at my high school after-graduation party, and it wasn't exactly my best performance ever.

However, last Saturday was a friend's birthday and she wanted to go to karaoke. So I gave in since it was her celebration and not mine. The karaoke place in town gives each group their own room, so you aren't singing in front of strangers. At first I was a little hesitant, but everyone was basically singing along with the people who had the mikes so I joined in as well. I even sang 2 songs with the mike, because they were songs I knew really well and most other people didn't know them! So I'm patting myself on the back for getting over my dislike of karaoke and having a good time. I'm actually a little excited about going again! Guess that goes to show that you should give things you don't like at least two chances.

Wow, I never thought that would happen to ME!

2008-05-19T16:56:00.004-04:00

So I just experienced one of life's little ironies for the first time: I started being healthier and gained weight. I now weigh 10lb more than I ever have before; yes, 10lb is not that much, but it's a start to something I don't want to continue.

It's ironic because it coincides with the academic year where I've been trying to cut out corn syrup (especially high-fructose corn syrup) by not buying foods with it in the ingredients, eat more organic and natural foods, eat fewer unhealthy snacks (replaced with fruit), and actually exercise. In fact, since January I have been exercising exponentially more than I have since coming to grad school.

Of course despite my good intentions there were weeks where we were just so busy that there was no time to cook dinner and instead we ate out or ate processed food (although we did try to buy processed food that was less bad than most processed food). I was also so stressed out for a month or so that I probably ate when I wasn't hungry. But these types of events have been occurring since I started undergrad so they can't by themselves explain the sudden weight gain.

The good thing is that the weight is not particularly noticeable to anyone else (in fact, someone asked me about a month ago if I had lost weight). This gives me hope that at least some of it is muscle mass from my increased exercise (softball, volleyball, tennis). But although it annoys me, it amuses me as well since I always hear women complain about gaining weight despite their good eating or exercising habits (and sometimes both), and I could never relate....until now!

I guess this summer will be a good one to test my theories on healthier living occurring during the summer instead of the school year for graduate students.

The Legacy of the Block of Wood in my Car Door

2008-05-12T18:43:00.006-04:00

"I'm sure someone my landlady knows has a table saw..."

Or at least something similar to the above statement is how the "fixing the car window" adventure of last summer began. The breaking of the car window occurred earlier that afternoon, when my officemate put down the rear right window on our way to lunch. As usual, the window hadn't worked well for a few months and I had put tape over the window switch to keep passengers from putting it down. By "hadn't worked well" I mean that you could put it down, but it would take at least a day or two until the motor would agree that the window should be allowed to go back up.

Of course it was entirely my fault that it happened: I didn't warn her not to put the window down, and when the problem had last happened I hadn't unplugged the switch from the window so that no amount of pushing the button would make it go down.

On the way back from lunch we stopped at 2 gas stations to get some WD-40 to try to lubricate the motor (the first gas station had NOTHING useful, and the second one only had a "WD-40 pen"). Richland apparently doesn't believe in these sorts of products.

We then worked on the window in our building's parking lot. I'm sure multiple people looked out their windows at some point and wondered what the heck we were doing taking a car door apart, but no one bothered us (hmm... is it a problem that no one cared about suspicious/odd behavior in the middle of a government lab's land?). We tried again later at my officemate's house.

Unfortunately, our efforts failed completely. Not to be out-smarted by a door, we came up with a plan: prop up the window with something. Our something became a piece of wood, but we needed a saw (and some wood). I bought some scrap wood for about a dollar at the home improvement store, and my officemate talked to the lady she was staying with about who she knew that might have a saw. Turns out someone just down the road did, so we went there after I returned with wood.

Well, the man down the street with a saw didn't like the block of wood I bought as it was a bit too big and needed to be cut (but a bit too big I mean about 5 times too wide). Luckily he had some other scraps and quickly cut them to size for me, along with a notch at the top to hold the window in place. We needed two separate pieces to be able to get it in the door, so I held the window up while he screwed them together. We then zip-tied the wood to the metal rod in the door. To put the inside of the door back on we had to trim the Styrofoam blocks attacked to it to fit around the wood.

This was supposed to be a temporary fix, since it was near the end of the summer and I would soon be driving across country to get back to New England. Well, until this morning the block of wood was still there, working every day and night to keep my window appearing to be normal.

About a month ago the window started to noticeably move down, such that a small opening appeared at the top of it. I opened up the door to check on my trusty block of wood. It was moldy! How gross. I assume the mold was eating up the wood enough to make it shrink or shift at the bottom of the door. Not having much time and a headache, I closed it all back up.

Today it was still relatively chilly in the morning, so I thought I'd see if I could get the motor to work. It has been finicky since around the time I bought the car (5 years ago...), so there is always a 50/50 chance on whether or not it will work on any given day. Amazingly, after plugging it back in the actual window support moved up when I tried the switch! Thus began about 20 minutes of taking out the moldy wood (with gloves) and putting the window back on its originally intended support. Another try, and window moved all the way up!

This time I unplugged the switch from the motor so that no one can put the window down. I left the tape on to help remind people not to bother trying, but at least now no one will erroneously feel bad about putting down the window.

You may want to ask why I just don't take it to a repair shop to get it fixed; well, I did that about 4 years ago when it first became a big problem, and about 6 months later it broke again. So I'd rather not waste my money.

Motion Detectors don't like Paper Airplanes

2008-04-18T13:56:00.000-04:00

On a related note to my recent Lights up my World post, we have a motion detector in our lab that turns off some of the overhead lights when no motion has been detected for about 15 minutes. Unfortunately for me, it only detects movement in half the room, with my desk being on the far end of the other half. So if I'm in there by myself, it gets really annoying, really quickly. Luckily, I have that new desk lamp that I can sit with as my primary light source (assuming most of the overhead lights are on) for a little while. Usually that little while is just long enough before I want to move anyway, meaning I can go set off the motion detector. I used to get up every 15 minutes, walk halfway across the room, and then go sit back down, and repeat....

Another one of my lab mates is also in the uncovered area of the lab, and we've been the only ones in the lab a number of times in the past two weeks. We started devising mechanisms to trigger the motion detector without having to move from our cubicles. I created a fabulous paper airplane that flew into the detected zone...and then did not activate the motion detector. We tried waving around my poster carrier tube as well. We also seriously considered tying something to the ceiling tiles with a rope ending at my labmate's cube so that if he pulled on it the movement of the object would turn the lights back on. Alas, we had not rope. So we just made any visitors walk in and out of the other door instead of the one closest to our cubes, causing them to set off the motion detector each time.

See, grad school can be entertaining! Really!

Purple peacocks, he's got 53!

2008-04-17T16:05:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday night I watched Disney's Aladdin for the first time in years (well, probably decades), thanks to having a housemate with a substantial movie collection. This was one of my absolute favorite Disney movies as a child, along with Aladdin 2, Snow White, and Sword in the Stone. In middle school I had the sheet music for all of the songs (I probably memorized it all as well), I knew all the words by heart (for the songs and dialog), and I really wanted to dress like Jasmine (is that really healthy?).

It's amazing how different Disney movies seem when you see them for the first time as an adult. There were things I noticed that I hadn't really noticed before, and I even understood something new! For instance, there were references that I hadn't really paid attention to in the movie before, such as the sultan praising "Ala" when Jasmine chooses a suitor and other good things happen. As a child I didn't know much about other religions, so I don't think I really understood. There were also sexual innuendos that I had understood on some basic level as a child, but understand much better now. There is also so little plot explanation and true character development, but yet the story is so lovable! It's like one of my housemates said: you don't see much of Rajah, but she is still one of the most beloved characters. Not to mention all of the references to other Disney movies, including Fantasia!

Although I think the biggest difference is my opinion of Iago, the parrot. He's so annoying! As a kid I just thought of him as an annoying parrot, and an interesting character for that very reason. However, now that I know who Gilbert Gottfried is and can recognize his voice a mile away, all I could think about was how annoying he is! Yes, he annoys me on many levels and probably always will. But now I can't even think of Iago as being a obnoxious parrot, all I can think about is Gilbert Gottfried having an annoying voice and how I wish he wasn't the voice of Iago! It totally ruins the ability to be drawn into the world on any level. I think this of all things may ruin my enjoyment of Aladdin for the rest of my life.

I still can't wait to watch Aladdin 2 again though, and I still miss the Aladdin TV series (although I was probably above the chosen viewing age when it was on).

neVer forgeT

2008-04-16T23:25:00.003-04:00

Today turned out not to be as bad as I expected. As the 1 year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, I expected to relive all the sadness and emotional instability of the week that started with April 16, 2007. I've had today on my mind for the past week, remembering all of the sadness I experienced myself as well as all of the grief I saw friends experience from afar. Thinking about how the university community was forever tarnished, and how so many people lost their lives, will always make me sad.

However, today I felt renewed. It almost felt like a fresh start, like a day to celebrate that yes, we made it. I really believe that today represents an important milestone in the healing process. That we made it to today helps to signify that we can make it to next year, and the year after that, and so on, without losing our minds, wallowing in grief, or forgetting to live ourselves. Granted, it is much harder for those who lost loved ones or dear friends, but I hope that reaching this point is helping them as well.

I wore an orange shirt today, and yesterday I encouraged other students and faculty through our social mailing list to consider wearing maroon or orange. I didn't see very many people in the department today since I was in my lab most of the time, but I did see people wearing those colors. It was nice to think that people were silently showing support. As I was thinking about things this past week I was worried that people might ask me questions about the shootings, especially people that weren't here last year but do know I went to VT. Thankfully no one did, as I think I may have fallen apart being asked much of anything.

It was an emotional day, but for the most part the emotion stayed inside and in the back of my mind. It came to the forefront only as I watched the commemoration speech webcast on the VT website. Hearing the names of each victim and a few sentences about them only served to remind me how real people died that die, real people with hopes and dreams, family and friends, plans for the future that will now never happen. It only served to remind me that they never had the chance to say "goodbye." It was enough that I had to pause the webcast a few times to keep from being overwhelmed. It was enough that just thinking about it is affecting me now.

As was said before, we will prevail. Although parts of this day were rough, making it to the end is a sign that we will indeed prevail, even it will take time. I hope that everyone else thinking about the Hokies today were also able to find strength for the future, and that everyone will be OK. I truly believe that we will be.

Grad Student Eating Habits (summer vs semester)

2008-04-15T22:29:00.001-04:00

I find that different times of the year bring about vastly different health choices, at least for me. This change was exceptionally noticeable between last summer and this past fall, as I was on an internship during the summer. Unlike most internships, I was not paid any more than during the regular school year, so money was not the main issue. However, I somehow worked out more, ate more fruit, cooked more at home, ate leftovers or "real" food for lunch, watched less TV, surfed less Internet, and saw more daylight.

Many of these changes are probably due to having more time in the evenings (although of course I had research to do during many of them), such as cooking enough dinner to eat for a lunch or two as well, and finding time for tennis in the evenings. I saw more daylight because my desk was actually in a room with a window (amazing!), and because daylight lasted at least until 9PM. I surfed less Internet and watched less TV because I spent more time on the phone with people who were not there, I read a few books (including the entire Harry Potter series....again), and I had to go to bed at a reasonable time.

Of course once I returned to grad school, I started eating instant lunch food again, sitting in front of the TV with dinner, not exercising as frequently, and sitting in a windowless room. I think somehow grad school just drains the will to put effort into this sort of thing.

I have been better this spring semester though. I'm on an intramural volleyball team (last summer was my first game of volleyball in about a decade!), I have weights and exercises to do at home, and I plan to bike into school once it warms up more. I've been better about eating fruit for snack instead of junk food as well! It seems like once you resign yourself to putting the little extra time here and there to keeping healthy, it's not really so hard. It's still hard for me to convince myself to exercise for the sake of it, but soon I'll have softball as well as tennis, so it should be a great summer again. Even without the internship definition of a work day!

Lights up my world!

2008-04-15T21:31:00.003-04:00

I just barely missed the month mark, but as of 2 days ago it has been 1 month since I blogged about the new light on my desk at school!

Yes, I know you were hoping for something more exciting. But really, it's riveting! My headaches seem to be completely gone (nothing short of a miracle), and I feel happier whenever I'm sitting at my desk. This has been true ever since I received that lamp. The difference is remarkable. I think I'm starting to sound a lot like an advertisement...but I really do love it!

It's amazing how something little like that can make being at work so wonderful. I was there until after midnight multiple nights last week (due to a deadline), and I think having such bright white light actually tricked me into thinking it was earlier in the day each time. If I thought my advisor was more likely to trick us, I would think that she'd paid for the lights just to con us into working longer hours in the lab.

I love books, but libraries don't love me!

2008-04-03T18:06:00.003-04:00

I've loved books since I was a kid. I actually got in trouble often for reading for too long at a time, as my optometrist had said that reading for hours and hours on end was one of the factors causing my bad eyesight. I remember reading with a flashlight in my bed in elementary and middle school since there was always more I wanted to read of the book.

So what does this have to do with my adult life? It would seem to have no correlation, as it's hard to find time to read for fun. I mostly read articles online (news, self-help, short interesting stories) that I can finish in 30 minutes. I also read online comics, which give me the nice fantasy world. But none of this is the same as reading a great book from start to finish (although I did read an entire trilogy last summer, as well as re-reading the entire Harry Potter series!). I've gotten halfway through a fiction book on audiotape (yes, tape) this schoolyear, but I haven't listed to that in 2 months now.

No, what my life has come to now is reading for research and classes. I read technical articles, textbooks, library books. And thus we get to the crux of my problem: library books. I'm like Hermione in the sense that I believe the answers to all of my academic problems lie in library books, only my library is not nearly as reliable as her library! Quite often our online library search does not find a book that does actually exist, a book I need is checked out for the next 5 months, or the book I need is at one of the other area colleges and will take multiple days to get to me. It seems that if you want a library book from a university library, you better check it out at the beginning of the semester, otherwise it will not be there! There are thousands of books in our library system, but yet the ones I really need are always checked out. Probabilistically, this should not happen to me as often as it does. I must conclude that the library does not love me as much as I love it.

I'm not sure what makes me sadder: that I never read for fun, that I now rely on a university library and am happy about it, or that something that should be so useful has failed me so many times and tends to fail at the crucial time period.

A great speech

2008-03-19T09:32:00.003-04:00

Usually political speeches drive me a little batty, but Barrack Obama gave one this week that I thought was actually really good. He brought up a lot of things that usually hide on the sidelines, some of which was related to both race and gender discrimination.

Whether you are republican, democrat, independent, foreign, or any other category, you should really listen to what he has to say. Much of his speech is devoted to why he will not denounce his pastor for comments that were made that Obama disagrees with, and I think everything was completely valid. Much of what he says is not particularly partisan, so I'm not trying to sway your political views but am instead encouraging you to hear a really great speech.

Making grad students happy

2008-03-13T17:50:00.004-04:00

OK, so I can't necessarily speak for making all grad students happy (except free food, funding, sleep), but over the course of the past 2 weeks I have acquired 2 things that have made my grad life much better!

First off is a lamp that mimics sunlight by using the entire spectrum of light! It also has 3 joints that swivel in different directions to help with positioning. My desk is in what I lovingly call a dungeon in that it is in the middle of the building and thus gets absolutely no sunlight whatsoever, has horrible fluorescent lights (that used to turn off on me when I was in the room by myself), and gray desks/cubicles. Ever since I started grad school I've gotten headaches most days of the week from sitting at my desk, partially from the lack of good light. However, now I have a light that makes everything white and bright instead of yellow and dim! I'm actually staying at school later into the evening to do work instead of leaving in the late afternoon, because I am happy to be sitting here! Granted I still don't have a window to look out of like I did this summer, but this light is still absolutely fabulous and is changing my life! And my adviser even paid for it. Since it brightened my cube so much, all 6 desks in the room now have one.

Second is a new flat panel widescreen 19" monitor! I've had an old CRT on my desk since my first year, and not only does it take up a massive amount of space, it also was not very bright or clear so it added to the headache problem. I've barely used it for the last year. Now I have a monitor that is crisp and clear, which makes it an actual pleasure to work on! This addition to my desk solves multiple problems, as I have a laptop that must be plugged in to an external monitor to work, I have an ergonomic keyboard that is less useful when I don't also have a monitor to use, and I have to be careful about eye strain. My adviser also bought this monitor, as well as another one for another desk in the lab! Although my monitor at home is actually bigger...

It's amazing how these 2 small changes suddenly make working at school so much better. I've often preferred to work at home, which sometimes is more productive and other times is not, but now I am actually happy to be here (yes, I'm blogging from my lab desk). These are changes we've talked about for at least a year, so it's great to finally have them happen!

Affordable technology makes life so much better, and grad students so much happier!

The story of my life!

2008-03-06T14:46:00.004-05:00

I love XKCD, and this is another comic that demonstrates why: it's so true! I was a member of a marching band from 8th grade through my junior year of COLLEGE, and after marching to the beat that long it's really hard not to do it in daily life. Occasionally when I'm in stores I have to force myself not to walk to the music's tempo. Yes, that sounds sad, but is it really horrible to be aware of time signatures??? Personally, I think I get much more enjoyment out of music from being able to find the beat, tempo, and harmony.

Granted, the comic may be an exaggeration (well yea, it's a comic!) but it really can jolt you when something weird like that happens. There's got to be at least one former band nerd reading this that agrees, right??

Funny on many levels

2008-03-04T12:55:00.003-05:00

One of the online comics that I love to read is PhD Comics. I love this comic strip both because it applies to my life as a graduate student, and because it's just plain funny.

The comic from yesterday is titled It's 3AM, and it something you should read. No, it has nothing to do with the Matchbox 20 song. If you are a graduate student or in a job where your boss would expect you to be working basically 24/7, you should be able to relate to this comic. For those who don't follow the comic already: the first character is a graduate student, the second character is that student's advisor.

This comic is also funny for an entirely different reason though, which everyone in the USA should be able to relate to: it's mocking/mimicking/inspired by an ad supporting Hillary Clinton. I have absolutely nothing against Hillary Clinton, but her campaign ad that is very similar to this comic strip is a little strange. It was even featured on Daily Show last night on Comedy Central, so I'm not the only one that finds it amusing.

It's so rare that a comic about graduate student life is highly related to the rest of the real world, that I couldn't resist pointing it out to my few readers.

New "virus" alert...

2008-02-23T14:43:00.004-05:00

Today I received an e-mail from my grandfather, asking if an e-mail he had received was legitimate. That e-mail referred to a virus that is going around...except that it is actually a hoax! I thought I'd share the e-mail and my response about it, since if you only look it up quickly you'll probably think that it is actually true!

E-mail that has been going around starting this month:

Subject: computer virus alert

Hi All,
I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus! I checked snopes.com, and it is for real!! Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP. PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS! You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD,' regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it. If you receive a mail called 'POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it! Shut down your computer immediately. This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept.

COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US.

OK. So that is possibly true...it even tells you to check out snopes! Of course it does have the capital letters and bad advice (shut down your computer immediately), so that's a first clue that it could be spam. After doing some quick research (and knowing about actual postcard threats going around already), here is my response:

OK. So there are spam e-mails pretending to be postcard e-mails, that are an actual threat. So don’t follow links in an e-mail claiming to be a postcard sent from a friend or family member unless it says that person’s actual name and/or e-mail address. Those websites will put a virus on your computer. HOWEVER, the e-mail below is actually a hoax e-mail referring to a non-existent virus that is sent as an attachment in an e-mail. Here is a (legitimate and reliable) website about the e-mail you received: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_postcard_virus.htm

The snopes.com result ( http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp )referring to postcard viruses is actually referring to the type I mentioned in the previous paragraph, where there is a link to a fake postcard site pretending to be an actual postcard site. The e-mail below is referring to an attachment virus from a friend, which is very different....and as I mentioned above, this virus does not exist.

The one thing you SHOULD always be careful about is opening attachments from people you don’t know, as I mentioned in my last e-mail, as well as following links in e-mails you can’t verify to be from the expected source. But there is no current virus attachment named “postcard” that will wipe your hard drive (in fact, most viruses now-a-days steal your information instead of removing it anyway). Also, shutting down your computer after ignoring such an e-mail serves no purpose….so even if there was such a virus going around (and there’s not!!), the below instructions are not completely right.

So don't fall for it! I'm very proud of my grandfather for checking on whether or not it was true before forwarding it to everyone, I hope that the rest of the world starts to do that as well!

Girls and Math

2008-02-21T15:43:00.003-05:00

In Computer Science we talk a lot about why girls shy away from math, computers, etc. even when they are obviously good at it. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to encourage them to pursue math and science, which includes trying to break stereotypes, talking about the many great careers that exist with computers, and giving them opportunities to try out many computer related activities. Not to mention all of the research on the topic. Still, the numbers of women in CS undergraduate programs in the USA is dropping.

I think the above comic helps illustrate some of the problems that we face. Often, girls and women are judged not as a single person, but as representative of their entire gender. As the comic shows, if a male does something wrong another male will assume it's because he is stupid; if a woman does the same thing wrong, that same male will assume it is because all women are stupid. This happens very often, which seems to not only put unnecessary pressure on women, but also gives people a skewed view of how people perform on a task.

As far as the pressure is concerned, women often feel less confident about their abilities even when they are doing just as well as (or better than) the males in their class. Especially with the low numbers of female students, they can easily feel like they don't belong, or that they are singled out and judged more than the men. Some women do not feel this way, but even one woman who feels this way is too many. With the added pressure of feeling like you represent all of your gender, this can be incredibly daunting.

So, what can we do to fix the problem? I wish I had the answer. I think the best beginning is to make people more aware of these tendencies. Maybe we if we talk about how we judge others more with younger people (college freshmen at the latest), they will be aware of it and try to fix it within themselves. It would be great to help make professors aware of this as they can (and do) make this problem worse as well. Not forcing women to represent all of woman-kind with every move they make, and just letting them be who they are themselves, would be great improvement for women in Computer Science.

Hello Samsung i760, Goodbye Treo 650!

2008-02-13T16:32:00.003-05:00

Around Black Friday I finally bought a new phone called the Samsung i760, after looking for about 6 months for a phone I really liked. For the past few years I've owned a Treo 650, so this is not my first hefty cellphone, or my first touchscreen phone. It is, however, my first Windows Mobile phone.

The hardware was one of the first things that made the phone seem attractive to me. With the Treo I had the QWERTY keyboard always at my fingertips, although the buttons were rather small. It was a useful phone but not entirely attractive or "cool." Only tech geeks said "ooooo" when they saw it. However, the Samsung looks sleek despite its size (although it is slightly smaller than the Treo!). It's a smooth black, with no antenna sticking out the top. The best part: it slides open. Not up like the Chocolate phones, but sideways...and when it slides, you find a nice QWERTY keyboard with comfortable keys inside! The screen even flips around so that you can hold the phone horizontally to type. Not only is this incredibly "cool," but it is also very useful; I have a decent sized screen without squishing the keyboard, but I also just have numbers on the main part for when I'm just using it as a phone! The phone is so fun, I love it! Sure, the LG Voyager and enV phones from Verizon both also flip open, but they only have a tiny screen to use with the keyboard.

Did I mention that it also has a 1.3 megapixel camera with a flash, as well as a battery that lasts me days even when I use it?? Or that it also came with an extended battery that is supposed to last even longer? The battery power is similar to what I enjoyed with the Treo, although since the battery is thinner it fits easier into my purse for when I want to carry an extra.

Of course, one the main reasons I got this phone as well is the fact that it's Windows Mobile, and I haven't been disappointed. I had many problems coaxing my Treo into syncing with my laptop, to the point where I just gave up and didn't sync for months. With Vista, I just plug my phone into the laptop (my laptop doesn't have Bluetooth built-in), open the Mobile Device Center, and it happens. No fights, no plugging and unplugging, no failure. It just works. Hallelujah!

Another great part aspect of the software is that the user interface is MUCH BETTER than the Palm interface. I don't need pretty graphics on my phone, but it sure does make using it a lot more fun! It also helps that I can customize my main screen to show my upcoming calendar appointments, tasks, missed calls, etc. I never had these types of options before! Now it's easy to see exactly where I'm supposed to be. Not to mention that I now have the wide world of Windows Mobile software at my fingertips! I even have a development kit for windows mobile from years ago, so it would actually be fairly straight forward to make my own!

Of course, the phone is not perfect, and some of the downfalls are so frustrating at times that I wonder for a few seconds why I bought it. For instance, the call button is on the side of the phone, approximately where one holds the phone when talking on it. If this button is pushed, it is not ignored, but instead starts doing this horrible beeping sound that interrupts the call so that neither person can hear the other. There is no way to stop this sound that I have found so far, but instead you must wait it out for about 10 seconds. So far that has not happened on any extremely important calls, but I'm just waiting for the day when it does and the person hangs up on me. The other little thing that annoys me is that it takes a microSD card instead of a standard SD card; for some people this is not a problem, but I have SD cards out the a**, whereas I have no microSD cards lying around. I've yet to make myself spend more money to get one.

Minor annoyances also include the fact that it doesn't flip screen layout as well as the iPhone does, as the screen is always vertical when it's open and horizontal when it's closed. But I can live with that!

So, moral of the story? Sometimes waiting for the right new phone is the best decision, because eventually something will come along that makes you really really happy.

Let's talk about Fish

2008-02-04T16:03:00.000-05:00

I receive a lot of junk e-mail which is not surprising considering I have multiple websites with different e-mail addresses on each; I'm an e-mail farmer's dream. It drives me crazy though that other people tend to make simple mistakes in trusting the e-mail they receive and are thus very susceptible to phishing schemes. For those that don't know, a phishing e-mail is one whose sole purpose is to steal your information by tricking you into entering it at their website. The website usually purports to be a well-known business, but is at an incorrect web address.

I would like to share a single piece of very simple junk mail (a phishing scam) that almost seems legit, and talk about why it's not:

Dear NAVY Federal Credit Union Member,

You have one new message at NAVY Federal Credit Union.

INBOX ( 1 )

From: NAVY Federal Credit Union Customer Service Date: 02/04/2008 Subject: Navy Account Suspended

In order to read this message please click on the link:

http://www.i-fox.org/upload/files/navy/

Thank You

NAVY Online Banking Mail Security Team

Copyright © 2008, NAVY Federal Credit Union. All rights reserved.

There are many reasons not to believe this e-mail. For starters, if you don't have a NFCU account it's obviously trash; but let's assume the recipient does in fact have such an account. Overall it may seem fairly normal, as they want you to go to the website to see your message, as many legitimate bank e-mails also require. Another flag may be the fact that it claims your account is suspended, which is a usual trick of phishing e-mails, as they want to grab your attention in such a way that you click out of fear or worry.

Yet another flag is the website address. I think regular e-mail users highly underestimate the importance of the website address and what it can tell you. There are many clues in that line alone that it is not a legitimate e-mail: the website is not the one you would expect, with i-fox.com instead of nfcu.org; the address includes "upload" and "files"; and the last folder is "navy". The combination of these address facts should clue you in that the website will probably be designed to look like the NCFU website but will not be real!

Of course this particular e-mail was particularly bad as the address is obvious in the text. Often the website address that shows up in the e-mail (if it is rich text or HTML e-mail) will be different than where the link actually goes; think of this as putting a "click here" message that links to a website. Thus you should always go to the website of the business that is supposedly contacting you by googling for their website, finding the website via your bookmarks, or using a website address you otherwise know to be correct. If everyone did this, phishing schemes would completely fail!

If you want examples of some of these other situations and some more basic tips, try Recongizing Phishing Scams, by Microsoft.

Juno

2008-01-20T11:24:00.002-05:00

Last night a group of grad students went to see Juno at the local theater. We were the last people in line to get tickets! It's been a long time since I've been to a sold out show. We weren't expecting as many people there to watch it since it's been showing for weeks, but I suppose if only the independent theater is showing it then there haven't been that many showings since it came out (they only have 1 larger theater, and 2 really small theaters).

The movie was fabulous, and you should all see it (the trailer is here). It is a comedy/drama about a 16 year old girl that has sex one time with her "best friend" and then gets pregnant. She then struggles with what that means and what to do, finding a family to adopt the child. Both Juno and her baby's father are also struggling to understand how they feel about each other. Juno's parents were refreshingly understanding about her pregnancy, even though they were still upset with her.

The music and style of the movie was perfect, as it continued to reiterate the fact that she is still a child "trying to cope with things way beyond [her] maturity level" (as said by Juno). I think a lot of teenagers need reminding of that fact, even though Juno is well aware of it. She was quite juvenile, but no more so than many people that age. There were stereotypes galore, all of which were hilarious. Juno gave many great lines, as did many of the other characters as well.

Although the movie was very funny, there were also touching parts. I think I lost a few tears on a few different occasions (although some were due to uncontrollable laughter). It was a glorious combination of the two genres though, and easily lived up to my (already high) expectations. The acting overall was great as well, and I was especially pleased to see Allison Janney (from West Wing!) playing the role of Juno's stepmother.

Now that I've rambled on, I encourage you to watch this movie! It's entertaining, thought provoking, and filled with witty lines as well as plain old humor. Very much worth the time! One of my favorite movies from the past year.

Tatebanko paper diorama

2008-01-14T14:57:00.000-05:00

One of the presents Tim gave me for Christmas was a pair of Tatebanko sets. These are paper dioramas inspired by the Japanese art of the same name, apparently popular from the 17th to 20th centuries. The company that makes them can be found here, although he apparently ordered them from a store in Brooklyn, NY.

It's hard to tell in the picture, but there are many layers from the front to the back, giving a 3D effect. They are fun to put together, even though some of the cutting can be slightly tedious. In the packet you receive multiple sheets of paper (poster board strength) that have shapes drawn on them. You cut on specific lines to create the different pieces for your picture. Each piece is numbered, and can then be glued to the matching number on the base. There are side pieces, a back, and a top that all need to be glued on as well. We assembled the first one together, with the result in the above picture. It was a fun craft, and since there are many pieces that need to be cut apart, folded, and glued it was a great one to do as a team. Hopefully we will do the other one soon as well.

This is definitely a craft that anyone with a little patience can enjoy (but a great deal is not require). You only provide your own scissors and school glue. A steady hand is also useful, although my hand was shaking as I glued pieces together and it still turned out fine. The final product is approximately 7" x 5" x 3.5".

Six Degrees - an application

2008-01-07T16:05:00.001-05:00

Okay, so I was really stuck on this whole "six degrees of separation" thing, so I figured I'd do some googling. I've heard of the idea many times over the years, thought it was interesting, and left it at that. Well, I've still left it at that but I've found an actually interesting Facebook application related to it.

The application is called "Six Degrees" and actually DOES something, unlike the Facebook group I mentioned earlier this afternoon (can you tell I'm getting a lot of work done right now?).

In this application you can see how many degrees of separation you have from the application creator via your Facebook friends. You can also search for other people on Facebook and find how many degrees of separation you have, but of course if you search for your friends you will only have 1 degree of separation. This is an interesting concept, and I'd be very interested to see how exactly he did this algorithmically since I can see a few different options.

Once again I'm not sure I agree with the premise that it tests the six degrees of separation though. I agree that it finds your degree of separation from the creator via your Facebook friends (assuming the algorithm works right), but I don't see how that is a true test of the six degrees of separation theory. One problem I have is that many people have "friends" on Facebook that they've never met in real life, have barely communicated with, and/or just added randomly. I don't think that really counts as a degree of separation, since it's akin to just using a person passing you on the sidewalk. Thus you could be shown to be closer than you actually are, giving an erroneously low count. On the other side, many people's friends and family are not on Facebook or are not yet linked to them via Facebook, so an incorrectly high degree of separation may be found instead.

I just really don't think any result from this experiment can be trusted scientifically, although it is definitely an interesting idea to try out. It's at least fun for the person who created the application, since it's main purpose is to see what the average degree of separation is between him and each individual Facebook user. I think I might actually try this one out.

Let's build a snowman!

2008-01-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

New Year's Day was a day of snow. It snowed all morning and into the afternoon, but graciously stopped around the time we went outside to play. I don't think we've found time to just go out and play in snow since I moved here, except for walking to the pond.

In the spirit of having a foot of snow, we decided to make a snowman. It had been a long time for both of us, so first we had to discuss how to make big balls of snow. Apparently rolling it works very well.

The entire time I could not get the snowman song from Cannibal, the Musical out of my head! I just kept thinking "let's build a snowman, we can make him our best friend, we can name him Tom or we can name him George!" And of course the lines: "we can make him tall or we can make him not so tall, SNOWMAN!" If you haven't seen this movie, I urge you to watch it. It's very funny, although a little gory at places.

In the end we had a surfer snowman with a pet turtle. Totally rad man. Yesterday he met his demise, but he was a good snowman while he lived. Maybe putting him under the tree wasn't the best idea.

Now, THAT's the life!

2008-01-07T14:34:00.000-05:00

I love January. It's one of the few times during the year where there are little to no pesky undergrads running around and driving like idiots. Also, I can drive through campus without having to stop at every cross walk. I also don't have to wait at a stop light when it's green due to people jaywalking because that whole 2 minutes they'd have to wait for a "walk" signal is just too long.

I don't hate undergrads in general (it really wasn't that long ago that I was one of them), but the undergrads at my current university do tend to drive me a bit batty on a regular basis. I suspect that they are drunk most of the time, if my current neighbors are any indication.

So January is great as I said; classes don't start again until the beginning of February, so the campus is relatively empty and I don't have any set times to go into school. Since I do all of my work on my own laptop (or by ssh-ing into a lab) it doesn't matter where I work. So what have I done so far? Well, I went into school 2 days last week but have otherwise worked on the couch in my pajamas. I have actually gone over to my advisor's house for 2 meetings, but that is much better than sitting in my windowless lab with dubious temperature controls. Surprisingly, I have been more productive this way. I plan to continue this trend as long as it works, even into the semester, as I only have 1 class and my advisor will be out of town in general. That means I only have 2 hours/week + 1 meeting that requires me to be at school!

Of course, I also just bought a PS2 so that I could finally play Kingdom Hearts, so I have one more temptation at home besides my still unfinished cross-stitch. So far I have gotten at least a solid 5 hours of work done each day (including the weekend), which realistically equates to over 8 hours of work in the lab (come on, you know you get distracted at work as well). Since this was all paper writing, I think that's pretty good. I'll start doing more hours/day for the rest of the break, but it was a nice way to start off the month that is supposed to be ultra productive.

Too bad this is the last Jan-term; next year they are starting classes in the middle of January! At least that will make the summer longer...

How many degrees again?

2008-01-07T13:50:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year!

So to start the new year off a week late, I just couldn't resist commenting about a Facebook group many of my friends have been joining as of late. It's name is "6 degrees of separation" and was started by a man who recently published a thriller novel.

The group claims to be testing the idea of "6 degrees of separation" by seeing if everyone on Facebook can be added to the group. It asks its users to invite ALL of their Facebook friends to join the group, claiming that the experiment will not work otherwise.

I was personally struck upon reading the group description that this "experiment" (self titled "the most ambitious facebook experiment ever") will not work no matter whether or not its users invite all of their friends, even if every person receiving an invite joins the group. The main flaw I find is that there is absolutely no way to test how many degrees of separation were traversed between the group creator and any individual group member. All that is really being tested is how many people can be added to the group, akin to the groups with titles such as "If 1,000,000 people join this group, I will do XYZ."

What I suspect is that the actual reason behind this group is part of a great marketing ploy. I have also noticed that most of the group news and updates are about the group creator's book and his recent interviews about it. Although I do not know the truth behind the creation of this group, I would not be surprised if the group creator or his publicist thought it would be a great way to dupe people into joining a group geared toward promoting his new book. If so, it's quite clever. If not, it's sad to see that he actually thinks he's testing the six degrees of separation theory at all.

It's funny to note that there are currently 3,710,939 members, although sad to see that some of my friends are among them.

The gift that keeps on Leeching

2007-12-26T20:11:00.000-05:00

In July I had this great idea to make a cross-stitch for my niece right after she was born. Since they decorated the baby's room in animals, that's the type of pattern I looked for at the store. The kit I selected is a baby animals kit called Cuddly Critters, which is definitely nowhere near a weekend project. Why didn't a choose a small simple one? Mostly because they were either ugly, uninspired, or Winnie the Pooh (which my sister does not like). Also, I really wanted to do something nice for them.

So I worked on this cross-stitch during part of the summer, but not extremely diligently. I worked on it when on the phone or watching TV, and occasionally I rode my bike to the park and sat there stitching for hours. I also stitched while in the car and not driving on the ride back across country (that I still need to write about).

So around Thanksgiving I was really starting to worry about the state of this project. I worked on it during the semester, but there is really only so much free time in a day that isn't spent sleeping. I had planned to spend the week after our final working on it all day, but a research paper refused to be finished before then and thus it usurped the stitching project. So what did I do after driving to Virginia? I spent 2 days sitting in my parents' house stitching on the couch either in front of the TV, listening to an audiobook, or listening to Christmas music. I basically moved only to help our old blind dog, eat, sleep, and go out to buy a frame for the finished project.

I actually didn't end up finishing it in time, although almost all of the cross stitching is done. Tonight I'll finish the cross stitching, and then I can spend the next few days on outlining and adding my embellishments. I already added my niece's name to it, so next to be added is her birthday.

As you can tell, my life has become consumed with stitching. I'm still glad I chose this design and this project, because they really seemed to like it. I framed it, wrapped it, and gave it to them on Christmas anyway, and my niece started pointed at it and giggling. Since she's 5 months old I assume she was not mocking my work, but maybe she's a natural art critic. Hopefully I'll finish it before leaving VA again in a few days just so that I don't go crazy.

Every few years I end up on some time consuming cross stitching adventure, so at least I probably have 2 more years before I have a time eating goal created from thread again. But then again I am crazy, so I might just find a new project before next Christmas!