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March 29, 2007
Validation
There are many things that I have done in my life that I would like to think have had a positive impact on society. However, I will probably never know what the impact was directly. Sometimes these things get me into trouble, or give me a bad reputation amongst some. Every now and then though, you find out that your work has actually been worth while and will positively affect someone you actually know. Today has bee just such a day.
In 2004 I wrote a series of editorial columns in our student newspaper on graduate student life. Some of them were light hearted some were more serious -- I am proud of all of them. I have run into a bit of trouble because of them and my job prospects here may be hurt because of them, but today I have been vindicated. I wrote one rather serious piece about the vulnerability of graduate students and how we needed an ombudsman to keep track of and investigate all of these "rumors" that you hear about mistreatment. Someone to serve as the institutes institutional memory about such things. Well through a series of random events we now have one. He's been in place for a little under 2 weeks now and today I received the following email:
Hi ,This is X. You may or may not remember me; I graduated AE '00 at X and was treasurer for Sigma Gamma Tau. I am a graduate student now in biomedical engineering. I read your article from the [Student Newspaper] a couple of years ago advocating a graduate student ombudsman. I was wondering if a position like this was ever established since that article; myself and other members in my lab may very well need someone like this very soon. If you know of anyone who is able to serve as an ombudsman for us, please let me know. Thanks for your help...
X
Wow, talk about validation for all my harping and carrying on.
Posted by kfeigh at 10:34 AM | Comments (1)
March 28, 2007
foggy
Today I am totally fogged in my own head. I think it is because for the past 3 days the pollen count has been over 5000 (high is considered anything over 120). My eyes are dry and itcy, my nose is running, I'm sneezing and worst of all I've got a bad headache. Add to all that yesterday my tounge and lips keept going tingly. Not all of them, but small bits would feel as if I'd clamped down on them for a few seconds cutting off blood flow and then relased them letting the blood rush back in. Very strange. No real idea what caused that but best guess was that it was something I ate that I was even more alergic to than normal. So last night I took a benedryl. Ever since then I've been sleepy. My brain fog was so bad this morning that I actually drank 10oz of diet coke. I think I'm finally coming out of it -- but who knows.
I wish it would rain! Stupid pollen.
Posted by kfeigh at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2007
Summer is here
We went pretty much directly from winter to summer in about 2 weeks. The high yesterday was 87 degrees F. Good grief.
The weekend was very busy with the normal errands and stuff to do. I got a haircut, worked for about 10 hours on my code, made an angel food cake for a dinner group, went to dinner group, went to church, yep pretty standard.
The one non-standard thing this weekend was the ING marathon. Which was, probably a success from the marathon organizer's point of view, but a complete and utter disaster to any one who lives in the downtown/midtown/decatur area. They practically closed off the entire area to street traffic from about 7am until late last night. The traffic was HORRIBLE and I didn't even go anywhere near it. The real problem was that the route was roughly circular and completely cut off some fairly large sections of the city.
Then it wasn't advertised very well. And when I say this, it wasn't that people didn't know about the marathon, but if you don't read the AJC (and for goodness sake, why would any educated person) or watch the local news (see parenthetical comment above) or actively participate in running (large number of yuppie atlantans) you probably didn't understand the extent to which this marathon was going to make yesterday a day to stay out of Atlanta. Plus there are all those "suburbanites" who travel blithly into the city on the weekends fairly oblivious to anything going on downtown.
Poor Brian, oblivious boy that he is, got caught up in the traffic yesterday. If you want a rare Brian rant, you should ask him about it.
The angle food cake turned out pretty well for my first attempt. It was a little under done (just ever so slightly), but tatsted great. It took 10 eggs and reminded me a lot of marshmallow fluff during the creation process.
Now it is back to work and more coding. Fun, fun, fun.
Posted by kfeigh at 08:33 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2007
Wedding Planning
This weekend my mother came into town on Friday and then organized chaos ensued for the next 3 days. On Friday we interviewed 3 wedding planners and hired one.
On Saturday, Brian fled the wedding planning madness for the sanity of his family. He helped celebrate his father's birthday on Saturday night and didn't show back up until Sunday evening.
Meanwhile my mom and I had an unfruitful day on Saturday. First the lady at the Renaissance Hotel stood us up, then the wedding dress place we went to treated me (and the whole dress buying process) as if I were a barnyard animal (no comments). Horrible, horrible. The sad thing was that I think that it was really the individual helping us who was horrible and not necessarily the establishment. Either way I'm not going to buy a dress there.
All I have to say is that people spend way too much money on a dress that will only be worn for a single day. I feel that my budget for said item is rather high, but apparently some people spend 6-10 times what I'm aming for...
We then turned on poor Ashly who dutifuly tried on about 20 bridesmainds dresses in every conceivable color and style. We settled on the AnnTa*ylor kind as it seems that these dresses are also expensive and there is hope that the AT variety might last more than one wearing.
One other minor rant here, why is it that dresses are organized by designer and not by something useful, such as price, color, style etc? If I get asked one more time, "what designers do you like?" I think I'm going to scream. Which might be better received than my typical response "the ones who sell dresses for less than $xxx" I almost took the lady who was "helping" us to task for her pathetic excuses about why we were not allowed to take pictures of the dresses I was trying on.
Sunday was much better. We went to church, and then went over to talk to the Renaissance lady, who was now back. We are planning on having the reception on the 25th floor of the Renaissance, date TBD. We are aiming for either the 12th or 26th of April. There is something potentially huge going on in Atlanta the weekend of the 26th though, so we might move it to the 12th. I like the 12th better anyway, nice symmetry in the numbers.
Later on Sunday we went looking at dishes, crystal, silverware etc. I think I've found stuff I like. As the Staples people would say, "that was easy".
Of course the church won't be able to give us a go/no go decision until mid May. Never one to take no for an answer, my mother stopped by the Church this morning to see if she could "hurry them up a little" or in other words convice them that it was easier to put our wedding on the officially non-existent calendar than to deal with her should she not get the date she reserves at the hotel. She didn't think she got anywhere, but DiAnne the church event planner (and possibly the most worthless human being on the planet) called me and has invited Brian and I to a "wedding meeting" whatever the heck that is on Sunday.
Now it is back to work and more Java coding...
Posted by kfeigh at 03:08 PM | Comments (3)
March 15, 2007
One Master and One Doctor
We now have one master and one doctor in the house. Neither has medical training :) I'm highly amused.
I'm otherwise in a downcast mood because I'm not progressing very well on my thesis work. I'm hoping the feeling will pass quickly, but I'm doubtful that it will. I'll just try to put off the mood until Monday.
On a fun geeky note, go to this website and scroll to the second box and read all of it. I was highly amused.
Posted by kfeigh at 02:44 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2007
He's Off
I just got back from sampling Brian's defense food. Very good if I do say so myself. As I was heading away I saw the AE department chair, the graduate coordinator and the undergraduate coordinator all headed that way. He's gonna have an audience of whose who around him. Glad I'm not there, I would only add to the nervousness.
So hopefully in a few short hours he'll have all of his signatures and for all intensive purposes be done.
---------------
He passed with flying colors. Got all 5 signatures and only has minor changes :)
Posted by kfeigh at 12:08 PM | Comments (2)
March 12, 2007
ROA
OK, so Ronoak is now officially the coolest airport ever. One it is small -- read Newport News small so getting hree an hour and a half before my flight was definitely overkill. I think if I flew out of here often I would get to know the names of all of the security gards. But the thing that puts it over the top is the free internet access in the terminal. Why don't all airports ofer this service?? (Money of course, but still).
The interview (or rather series of interviews) went well, I think. I am now exhausted after 11 hours of straight talking to people about my work, their work, etc. I normally spend the entire day with me and my computer -- talking nonstop (no matter what Brian, Steven and my father might say) is exhausting. So is trying not to upset anyone on my first day.
VT is awsome in so many ways that my present situation is not. For one they have lab space, a computer refreshment and training program for faculty a program to stop the tenure clock that more men took last year than women. They have most of their HF faculty in one department so you don't have to cross departmental or school lines to work with other people. The IE department had lots of cool toys, three driving simulators and one flight simulator. Good grief.
The whole place was really welcoming. Now I just have to wait and see if 1) they give me an offer and 2) they can find a jo for Brian.
The rest of this week is a whirlwind. Brian's defense is on Wenesday and my mom comes into town on Friday. We've got a whole weekend of wedding planning on tap.
Posted by kfeigh at 06:25 PM | Comments (2)
March 11, 2007
The trip here
OK, so it was probably not the wisest decision to book a flight with only a 30 minute connection window, but there it is. I got the airport in Atlanta with plenty of time to spare having remember about the time change. Judging by the line of "problem" people at the airport however I don't think many others with early morning flights did.
I got through security and to my gate with no problems, but as I passed my gate on my way to find lunch I noticed that the gate for my 1110 flight read 930 -- not a good sign. I especially thought it was bad considering that I figured the same plane just shuttled back and forth to ATL all day long.
Gotta go, my next "apointment is here".
Posted by kfeigh at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2007
Off I go
This past week has been terribly frustrating, nothing that I set out to do was actually completed. I wanted to get significantly far along in figuring out my optimization routine -- all I have managed to do is convince both myself and a labmate that the problem is worse than I thought... My current plan is to finish out the system minus the optimization routines and then tackle that once I get everything else working. I also wanted to get my sim working with the new, more secure ISyE servers. No luck their either. For some reason the server side client (the piece of software I didn't write) doesn't recognize that the socket is open if we use port fowarding or cygwin... Any good C++ socket programmers out there listening? I'll take any suggestions at this point.
I did manage to make middling progress on the actual system programming itself, but not as much as needed.
To add to this frustration I'm headed off to Roanoke tomorrow to interview at VT. I should be excited, but I cannot shake off the frustration from last week. I feel like I haven't had time to properly prepare for this interview. Not as if I think that there is all that much you can do to prepare, this is just one of those things that you've actually been preparing for the past 10+ years of your life. So here goes nothing -- me on my greatest charm offensive.
I would like to enjoy my time out, but I keep thinking about how much time I'm loosing to my work. Strange but true. Not that I actually feel that much of a compunction to actually work any harder. I'm at an average of 12 hours a day 5 days a week and then another 6 on the weekends as it is. I just don't know how people can actually work 80+ hours a week. They must not sleep or actually maintain their living environment. If I had someone to cook all my meals, clean my apt, do all my shopping, etc I think I could squeeze in about another 10 hours, but not much more.
So wish me luck and send good optimization inspiration vibes my way.
Posted by kfeigh at 08:24 PM | Comments (3)
March 01, 2007
Computer Issues
So, for those of you who don't know, the AE department IT infrastructure is so bad here that the rest of the campus has a firewall built around it... So why I didn't see this coming, I'll never know. I'm kicking myself now.
For my thesis work I am running a simulation remotely on a server owned by one of the AE profs. He's only recenly moved down here so I expected a lot more of him. Yesterday the server was physically relocated. I was not consulted or even informed... Needless to say the first I knew of it was when I tried to log in, but couldn't.
The server didn't surive the move, or if it did, the data didn't. The back up of the data didn't survive either. Sigh. I didn't loose much. Its just that now I've been without it for 2 days... This is annoying because I don't have time for stuff like this.
Right now I'm waiting for someone to email me a copy of the sim again so that I can put it somewhere safer... Waiting all day. Too it is rainy outside or I think I'd just go enjoy the sunshine.
Posted by kfeigh at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)