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April 27, 2006
Two happy notes
First and most importantly, Steven is home from Iraq. According to my mother he has all fingers and toes, so everyone is happy. The thing he missed most, according to him, is the green landscape. Hopefully the Army will see fit to keep him here for at least the next year so he can enjoy his new house. Becca I assume can send him some lawn care tips :)
Secondly, my passport came. This is good for two reasons 1) it means I can leagally go on my trip to Dubai and 2) it means I have my old passport back. It is one of those sentimental items that I will hopefully have for the rest of my life.
Posted by kfeigh at 10:28 AM | Comments (2)
April 24, 2006
Running and Cleaning
This weekend was full of running and cleaning. I ran the Pi Mile Road Race early Saturday morning in a light rain. Fun, fun, fun. I made good time finishing in 31:18. It was a little slower than I had hoped for, but the course was rather hilly so I'm please just to have finished not too much out of breath. My running class is over now so I have to find new motivation to continue running so that I will be inshape enough to run the Peachtree Road Race in July.
Other than that we cleaned on Sunday morning. The apartment will sparkle for the next 24 hours or so. After that it will look grungy until we clean it again.
Posted by kfeigh at 02:38 PM | Comments (2)
April 19, 2006
ABD
Well the proposal came and went today. Overall it went pretty well -- could have gone better, but not much. I guess in my dreams the committee would have come in, listened to my pitch, made some minor suggestions and stamped their approval. In reality the committe came in, listened to my pitch, made lots of suggestions, got really excited and started generating ideas of how I could spend the next 3 years of my life developing and testing my support system.
So the long and short of it is that instead of having a clearer idea of what I should be doing for my thesis, I am less clear. Of course, this is to be expected, and not a bad thing. The committee basically asked me to step my experiment up a notch from an experiment with undergraduates to an experiment with experts -- a bit more work. In the end it will probably take me another semester to graduate -- Spring 07 here I come, but the work will be better (hopefully) and more applicable.
I walked away with 3 out of 5 signatures, which isn't bad considering one of my committee members is in Turkey and one of my members had to leave early. I'll get the 4th sig next week when I meet with him one on one.
Posted by kfeigh at 06:24 PM | Comments (24)
April 13, 2006
Thesis Proposal
Thesis proposal -- is out. Yes that is right after next Wednesday I will finally earn the dreaded ABD title. For those of you suitable ouside of Academia not to know what ABD stands for, well it means All But Defense. This is one of two dreaded holding patterns that grad students can easily fall into -- for years.
Hopefully all will go well. I've got about a bizillion things to do between now and Saturday so off I go.
If you are strange enough to want to read/skim a copy of my thesis you can go to http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~ just replace the with the first letter of my first name and my last name. So if I were Bob Smith the address would be http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~bsmith (isn't internet security fun)
Posted by kfeigh at 08:54 AM | Comments (1)
April 11, 2006
Holding pattern
I'm in the middle of writing a paper. The paper is not due until Friday (now). So normally this is a great place to be. Unfortunately I'm waiting back on a big (and hopefully final big) revision to the paper. The rub? I want to take the content of this paper and chunk it wholely (or with minor changes) into the introduction section of my thesis proposal.
The problem is that I'm not sure yet that my supervisor views this as a crunch deadline yet -- the whole proposal thing. And until he views it as such, he feels very little compunction to actually read things that I give him... Sigh.
Posted by kfeigh at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2006
Things to do before next Friday
Monday -- April Conference paper due
Wednesday -- Proposal due to committe (and available on line for all interested parties :)
Friday -- Presentation for May Conference due
Friday -- Proposal Presentation practice -- (so a draft of that presentation is also due)
And then looking out beyond next week.
April 19... my proposal. Ack!
I hope everyone else enjoys their weekends over the next two weeks, I won't even notice that they have happened.
Posted by kfeigh at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2006
Finally, some common sense
For the second time in my lif3, I think that I would be willing to consider living in Massachussets. They seem to have accomplished what the entire nation needs to be trying to achieve, instead of arguing about. They are making health insurance mandatory and simultaneously affordable. Read about it here.
Hopefully it will be well implemented and well run, so that the rest of the union has a model to follow.
Posted by kfeigh at 08:56 AM | Comments (2)