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August 24, 2006
Too funny
From an article on Pl*anB
Both sides are wrong, studies suggest. Couples in the United States have so much unprotected sex — half of all pregnancies are unplanned — that even if the pills were passed out like lollipops, they would be unlikely to cause a major change in abortion and disease rates.
If only we could put birth control in the water.
Posted by kfeigh at 11:27 AM | Comments (2)
Trip in time
Well I am on the verge of sending out my first job application. Yes that is correct, I am actually applying for a job almost 12 months in advance of when I believe I would like to actually begin to work for a living. Scary huh. Anyway it got me to thinking, once I send this off people are going to start to try to learn more about me. I figured the first thing they might do is google me. So I decided to google myself first to make sure I was aware of what the "net" had to say about me. It is a highly amusing trip. Here are some highlights:
1)Of all things the SGA homepage -- had to modify it abit.
2)My name on a microchip that went to a comet in 2004
3)All kinds of award stuff
4)A paper I wrote in highschool while on a NASA internship
5)A Nique article on the AIAA student picnic
6)My bio from our vomit comet website (the box, by the way, is still in the undergrad aero lab)
7)A comendation from the state of VA
All highly amusing. Somewhere deep in there was my official website with my public resume. It seems that the web has a long memory. I wonder what it will say about me in 10 years.
Posted by kfeigh at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2006
People are back
I've gone from just one lonely Korean officemate to two more. One talkative chinese guy and one american. Both are younger than my brother -- you know it is time to move on when... Either way, the great thing is that they both speak english well -- not such a great feat for the american, but hey. So today I got to hand work off to one of them for proof reading. YES!!! After a semester of having no one else to bounce ideas off of and to help proof read things it feels really nice.
OK back to work now.
Posted by kfeigh at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2006
First Class
I taught my first class today, and am presently sitting through my first set of office hours. Amazing how I can sit in my office for hours on end, but give me just one time period in which I need to be in my office and I can think of are things that I want to do which will take me away from my office.
It went well I think. I clearly need to work on slowing down when I speak. (This is perpetual and I will still be working on it when I'm 50). Right now I've got 6 students 2 on-campus and 4 distance ed. UG. It is really hard to have a discussion based course with only 2 students sitting in front of me. Needless to say I hope they both continue on with the class (and don't get sick often). I've encouraged them to each go out and bring friends back with them.
More news later.
Oh, my new laptop came. Very cute. I've already screwed it up once and had to do a factory re-image. This is very standard for me. Now if anyone has any experience setting up wireless networks and can point me to a good how-to document that would be good. I tried to follow the MS directions but they involve using a USB key in your router, and my router doesn't have any USB ports on it.
Oh and mom was here all weekend. We did massive amounts of shopping -- really ending up with very little to show for it. The highlight was eating exceptionally well every night. This is good -- store up food for the long semester ahead :)
Posted by kfeigh at 01:18 PM | Comments (2)
August 16, 2006
I do not do all night.
Yes this weekend was long. We helped Rob load his stuff into a truck for the long trek across the US. He's in a medium size truck with two large dogs and a cat and towing his car behind. I'm just glad I'm not him.
It's kind of sad. Now all of the guys that started grad school with Brian have graduated, and he's still here plugging away. It is always harder to be the one who stays behind than to be the one who moves away. I understood that even as a kid, even as much as I hated moving, that it was far harder on the friends that I left than on me.
Other than that the weekend was uneventful -- we both continued to work. Me on my class stuff and Brian on his thesis stuff. I've not been too terribly productive. For one I've got some sort of mild head cold which makes me slightly dizzy and has given me a fairly constant sinus headache. It plagued me worst on Sunday. The second is that because my class isn't really following a pre-established cirriculum it is up to me what to teach and in what order. This is a very circular problem I've discovered. I keep arranging my topics and then find myself re-arraning them because I feel that I cannot teach B until I've taught A. Then about 30 minutes later I switch them back again. I think I've got it now, but as you can see there was a lot of thought with relatively little to show for it.
I presently have 2 people signed up for my class -- both distance ed. This could be a very difficult class to teach unless I find some warm bodies to talk to.
The other reason that my mind has been turned to mush this week was because a senior prof walked into my office to say something to one of his students and then turned to me and said, "you know human factors" This is never a good sign. I nodded slowly. He then proceded to tell me that my supervisor wasn't responding, yet he needed help to put together a white paper to apply for a huge grant (read 150K+ for 3-5 year). What could I do but agree to help. I will say that I agreed to help grudgingly:
Prof: I'll be in charge of this one, you can be in charge of that one.
Karen: I don't really want to be incharge of any. I'm still a student.
Prof: It is due on Thursday.
Karen: I'm going on vacation Wed at 5pm. I'll hand over what I have to you at 5pm on Wednesday.
Prof: (Ignoring me) OK so I'll have all these guys email you. I'm sorry to impose upon you because I know you'll be up all night this week working on this.
Karen:"I do not do all night. I am not staying up for this"
And so it went. Luckily for me I had a productive writing day yesterday and got things in good shape. Also luckily my supervisor reappeared from the woods to take it over. It was then that I learned this white paper is essentially a place holder for a proposal we will submit later and it really doesn't matter what is written on it. Sigh. This means that sometime in October I will get to have the same conversations again.
So needless to say Monday and Tuesday were not good for my head. Plus all of the new students have begun arriving. I gave an hour long tour in the 90+% humidity yesterday.
The good news is that my mom comes tonight for our long-planned summer shopping spree. Thus why I am taking Thursday and Friday off. Perhaps I'll feel better if I don't have to think for the next few days.
Posted by kfeigh at 03:10 PM | Comments (2)
August 08, 2006
New Laptop
After almost 4 years, I am breaking down and purchasing a new laptop. I've been looking for a while and after resigning myself that I just couldn't justify the tablet PC, I took advantage of this weekend's tax holiday to order a Thi*nkpad X61t. I'm hoping that I like it and it works out as well as the last one. You ahve to admit that 4 years of constant use and abuse by myself (I don't even have a dedicated bag for it) is pretty impressive. Only had to repair it twice -- once because I broke the hinge by opening and shutting it one handed on the corner for three years straight, and once because I tried to reformat the hard-drive with out really knowing what I was doing.
The new guy should be here just after school starts. Toys, toys, toys.
Work is slow. I'm splitting my time between class prep and writing a report/apendix on my latest observations. It helps me with my thesis, but just doesn't feel like I'm making any forward progress. Must be patient.
Oh and Rice is having an workshop for women interested in becoming faculty in September. I'm going to apply so I might be in Houston this fall.
Posted by kfeigh at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2006
Plugging away
The weather here had been miserable -- not really overly hot, but exceedingly humid. I think we brought it back from Charleston! I've just been plugging away at work alternating between preparing for my class and working on the report from my trip to Seattle. Hopefully the report will be mostly finished by the end of today (I'm a little overly optimistic with this one I think).
No news yet from any other airline on getting to go out and visit. I need to do at least two more by December. OK houston folks, which airport does Continental have its ops center at? Anyone willing to put me up and loan me a vehicle for a few days?
Graduation is today where most of the class of folks who came in with Brian will graduate. Hopefully he won't be far behind. The first of my friends to snag Prof. jobs will also be graduating today. Both are taking jobs in the Cal-state system. I wish them well.
Posted by kfeigh at 09:11 AM | Comments (2)