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August 30, 2005
Headlines from Katrina
Strange things happen durring and after natural disasters. Sometimes the most interesting stories are those about things that are not obvious, or about things that are so obvious they are often over looked. So far the most amusing headline I've seen about the storm's aftermath is
Wal-Mart closes 123 stores from storm
Now when Wal-Mart's close in small town Mississippi and Louisiana things are really bad.
Posted by kfeigh at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2005
Biloxi, MS
Yes, it seems that my home town has gone from obscurity to media sensation over night. While I cannot personally remember much about Biloxi other than the fire ants, it is still nice to know that the place that gave me such a unique social security number (at least outisde of the state of Mississippi) is still alive and kicking. At the moment, however it appears to be treading water.
So this weekend was nice and lazy. I'm still shopping around for a tablet PC. Went to BestBuy and looked at the 14.1" toshiba. Pretty nice. But it should weigh a little over 6 pounds -- I was hoping for a lighter choice. However when we picked it up at the store it certainly didn't feel like 6 pounds. Maybe it was just balanced well. The weight would certainly be more compact in tablet mode than in open laptop mode. Brian and I still aren't convinced that the battery was acutally in it.
Other than that, I cleaned, did laundry and some homework. Ahh, my hopefully last class for a grade ever!!! Maybe I should saver it?
More work to do this week. Amy is away and I'm teaching her Cog Eng class on Thursday. Actually I'm just facilitating discussion, but I still actually need to do the readings.
Posted by kfeigh at 08:52 AM | Comments (2)
August 25, 2005
New Semester
Yet another fall, another semester at GT. I have now officially been taking classes at Tech for 6 years. Where does the time go? Lots of changes up for ye'olde Aerospace Engineering School. Never fear Jagoda is still the grad coordinator and Loewy is still keeping tabs on everything from behind the scenes. However substantial changes are taking place in other areas. I call it the MITification of GT. We have 2 new professors from MIT down here now 3 if you count Amy (now being full time AE). We also have lost the services of one Prof. Jenkins. Personally I am really excited about all of the changes -- there seems to be renewed energy in the department.
This semester I'm only officially taking one class -- the last public policy class I need for my minor -- policy analysis. I'm also auditing a non-parametric statistics class taught by a brand new IE prof from U. of Wisconson. He's really good and I hope I can continue to attend lectures with him. I'm also a grader for the Cognitive Engineering course. Hopefully all of these things will help with my preparations for the quallification exam.
Still no word on the exam committee. We've now officially petitioned for an ad hoc committee. I'll keep you posted.
Posted by kfeigh at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2005
Long Week
Well, like most of the last weeks of summer that I can remember this one went by really quickly and left me exhausted. So let's start at the beginning. On Sunday night I had the great idea to use Partition Magic to try to find some free space on my Linux partition (as I'm out of spaceon my windows partition). Well this failed spectacularly as the software crashed in the middle of the operation. When I rebooted all I got was this lonely line of text which read:
Loading DOS_
So guess what I spent all of Monday trying to fix? To make matters worse when trying to rescue my system I could not remember my administrative password that I had given the computer 3 years ago. I learned one valuable lesson though. If you don't know your passwords NO ONE is going to help you. Finally through sheer luck and some fantastic connections (thank you mom) I spent an hour with a windows expert who helped me reinstall the master boot record and all is fine once again.
So Tuesday was spent backing up my computer to an external hard drive. While I did not constantly monitor the process it did take ~37 hours to complete. I spent the day writing up my CV and a 2 page explanation of my research interests so that the graduate committee can find appropriate committee members for my comprehensive exam committee.
Wednesday was a blur of new student activity. Had another grad women's dinner group dinner.
Today I spent running around watching some family friends move their son into Tech. Sure is much nicer watching the move instead of participating in it. Still lots of fun. Now they have fraternity members helping people move in for service points. Sure makes things go a lot quicker.
This weekend I go to La Fayette with Brian to visith the folks and to attend an engagement party for a friend of his.
Posted by kfeigh at 06:10 PM | Comments (1)
August 12, 2005
Maintenance-- Apartment Style
So two days ago we finally got fed up with our dripping bathtub faucet and called in maintenance. This is always a mistake. Two days later they came and replaced the innards of the faucet. However, they did it wrong so that we could only get cold water out. Well I was not going to stand for that, so I took it back apart and reassembled it correctly. It was then that we discovered that the hotwater wasn't working. NOT FUN. So I put in another call yesterday stating that we had no hot water. Now I wouldn't classify that as an emergency, but it should be at the top of non-emergency repairs. Of course no one came yesterday, so Brian and I were again on the case. Brian solved this one by flipping the little switch at the bottom of our gas water heater from "Pilot" to "On" I have no idea why the guy who was fixing the faucet would turn off the water heater, but maybe it had something to do with turning off the water? Either way hot showers were had by all this morning.
So I figure if we live in this apartment a few more years, maintenance should have us trained up real-good so that we will be prepared to maintain our own house.
Posted by kfeigh at 08:47 AM | Comments (4)
August 11, 2005
DVORAK
So for a while now I've been meaning to learn the dvorak keyboard. Last night I finally got around to it. Clearly it will take some time, but I am getting used to it.
My speed right now is pretty pathetic, but I am hopefull that in time things will get better.
Enough for now.
Posted by kfeigh at 09:30 AM | Comments (1)
August 08, 2005
Tubing
This weekend I finally took a day trip out of Atlanta. I decided that in the down time between semesters I wanted to get out of the city, then I remembered that because of the non-stop rain we've had that Tubing up in Helen (small town in N. GA that thinks it is Bavaria) might actually be fun this year. So I invited a bunch of people and ended up going with just one other girl, Ashley. Brian was busy pondering and afraid of drowning in the 4" deep water. Shannon and her husband bailed to do some mass spectrometry. Jeanne had car trouble. Matt and Theresa could not be reached for comment.
We had a great time. The newest innovation is a tether, which made the inter tubes act a lot like bumper boats. It was really fun.
Sunday was spent vegging out.
Today was spent doing more reading and then editing my journal paper, yet again. Sigh.
Posted by kfeigh at 07:45 PM | Comments (20)
August 04, 2005
Curtains
For those of you wondering about the curtains, I finally got around to posting a picture of them
.
Other than that things have been pretty quiet here. I've been studying all week for my comprehensive exams. I've learned lots about the concept of workload and today has been dominated by my never ending quest to understand the statistics I need to properly analyze my data.
Why is it that the simple designs are never usefull? I actually spent all day reading chapters 29 and 30 of a 30 chapter stats book. I was so excited that I finally found someone else who understood what type of design I had been using. So that lead to new vocabulary to properly describe my design which inturn lead to another book o' statistics which I've been parusing this evening. Fun, Fun, Fun.
Tomorrow I will actually be able to start writing my response to the latest round of reviewer criticism.
This weekend I'm going up to Helen to go tubing with a friend from Tech and one of Irwin's friends. Brian was supposed to come, but as all of the men who were invited have bailed it might just be safer to leave him at home curled up with his ponderings.
Posted by kfeigh at 10:02 PM | Comments (1)
August 01, 2005
Catching up
Well last week flew by before I realized I had not updated my journal. So let's begin. At the beginning of the week I took my undergrads down to Delta's OCC. The weekend was full of prparing the my final project (which takes the place of a final exam) for my design of experiments class. So the rest of the time on Monday and Tuesday was spent finishing that up. On Wednesday and Thursday I went up to DC with Amy to sit in on the National Academy's Aviation Engineering Advisory Board meeting. It was neat. I realy enjoyed the first day because the talk was centered on how to fund the future air transportation system. There was a general consensus among the presenters that user fees were the way to go due to decreasing ticket tax revenues. There was however less consensus among the Board memebers about the wisdom of this step.
I got back on Thursday. Fridaw was a blur and I'm not sure what I did. I got my 2nd journal paper review back (that is the second time I've gotten it back, not the second paper). I've managed to satisfy one of the reviewers but not the other. In fact the 2nd reviewer is a bit of a jerk.
Saturday was spent making curtains (or more accurately a window treatment) for my bedroom window. I'm quite proud of it actually considering I didn't have a pattern.
Sunday was a lazy day spent reading Freakonomics and grocery shopping.
Today is my first day of 3 straight weeks of studying for my comprehensive exams. Still no word about the make up my comprehensive exam committee yet. Theoretically they are meeting today to decide my fate. If you want to know more about my fun predicament, feel free to call.
The other downside is that the internet is down at work -- go figure so I'm updating from home.
Posted by kfeigh at 12:12 PM | Comments (2)