The Theater Absurd

Going Dark...

2007-10-24T17:52:00.000-04:00

I think that this blog has just about reached the end of its life, so this will be the final post.

Thanks for reading.

Pushing Daisies

2007-10-10T23:22:00.000-04:00

Pushing Daisies is quite possibly the weirdest show on television, but I absolutely love it. It's like one of those dreams you have where every thing is slightly (or wildly) off, and you know it, and therefore you know you're dreaming, but you just kind of go with it because it is cool.

That's the best explanation I can give of how it makes me feel when I watch it. I'm sure it will be cancelled soon - it's too weird for an America that watches Kid Nation to appreciate.

P.S. I love the way that 30 Rock makes fun of reality TV programming. MILF Island? Hi-larious.

OK. I have no life.

Pumpkin Patch 2007

2007-10-07T17:09:00.000-04:00

Attended the MIT Glass Pumpkin Patch again on Saturday. Against my previous promises to only purchase one pumpkin this year (after a big splurge last year), I ended up with three. The nice thing was that this year there seemed to be a much higher ratio of affordable pumpkins (sub-$100), and the organizers (MIT GlassLab) did a much better job of policing the crazy hoarders - people who literally sleep overnight and bring shopping carts, then make a made dash into the sale area and scoop up all the small, reasonably priced pumpkins. This year a group of people must have scooped up almost 50 immediately, much to the ire of other shoppers/viewers. The head of the GlassLab had a long talk with them and many were returned to the field for others to have an opportunity.

Some choice photos from the event:

Then and Now...

2007-09-23T12:00:00.001-04:00

My how we've grown:

The pup at 9 weeks:

And now at 9 months:

The Weekend

2007-09-22T19:09:00.000-04:00

I spent today catching up on some much-needed housework. I was up rather early, as at 10 AM a home inspector was coming to check out the place as a requirement for the new homeowners' policy I recently enrolled in. He came and went without incident, though I had been nervous that he was going to poke around the basement and find something not to someone's liking and I would be forced to shell out money I don't have to repair it or else they would drop the policy. Thankfully, none of that came to pass.

I had the front door to the house open as I was working, and around 11 AM I heard the squeal of tires outside, of brakes being laid on hard. The house is on a relatively busy road, and there has been at least one car accident that I have witnessed almost right outside the house. When I arrived at the front door, to my horror, I saw my neighbor's dog from across the street writing and yelping in pain - it had been hit pretty much dead on, and the back of it's body clearly crushed.

I ran across to my neighbors and asked if they knew the location of the emergency vet in the area. They were clearly distraught and there was much confusion, so I ran back inside and looked up the number and called them to let them know there was a dog that had been hit by a car on the way in. By the time I got back out to the road, the dog was still, clearly in shock. They gently put him into a laundry basket and took off for the emergency veterinary clinic, which thankfully isn't too far.

I'd like to say that this has a happy ending, but it doesn't. About an hour later I saw them come back, so I popped over to see what had happened. The poor animal had died on the car ride over, his injuries too severe. The worst part was that the driver who hit him didn't even stop. They kept right on going, even though the squealing of their brakes clearly indicated they had seen the dog. Whoever you are, you are a coward and criminal for leaving the scene of accident.

All of this hits rather close to home, as I have a nine-month old dog in my house. He is well behaved, and I think I have instilled a healthy respect of the road and the front yard in him (he isn't allowed near either), yet this could have easily been him. What if he had spotted a squirrel or a...something, and taken off in the direction of the road? It all happened so ridiculously quickly that there would be no time to react. In any case, the whole incident left me very shaken and upset. I made sure to give the pooch some extra hugs today.

In order to make myself feel a little better, I decided to go to the movies after I had finished the housework. Last night I was watching Tron on my AppleTV. (n.b. - I don't know which of those things makes me a bigger geek.)(Additionally, G-Fav - Tron is in reality a really bad movie...I don't know why I didn't remember this. What was with all the ginormous eyeglasses in the 80's?)

Anyway, after the movie was over, I was futzing with the AppleTV and was looking at the movie trailers when I spotted In the Shadow of the Moon. What's this, I think? Turns out it is a new Ron Howard documentary about the Apollo program told by many of the surviving Apollo astronauts. The result is a deeply personal look at the Apollo program as told through the eyes of the men who lived it. It also featured a great deal of footage from the Apollo era that has recently been released and restored by NASA.

So this is the movie I ended up seeing this afternoon, and it is breathtaking. For those that know me well, you know that I am an unabashed space enthusiast. I have been to Florida for a Space Shuttle launch, I know, work with, and am friends with a real live former astronaut. I took a bunch of aero/astro classes in grad school, and I met Buzz Aldrin once at M.I.T. You know, all basic nerd stuff. I was on the edge of my seat watching Apollo 13 even though I knew how it turned out.

I don't know what it is about the notion of space travel that appeals to me so much. I don't think of myself as an explorer by nature, and I also don't think of myself as particularly courageous or fearless or thrill-seeking. I really think it is the engineering and passion that drove and does drive the people who work on these types of projects. The notion that every piece of equipment was designed and tested and integrated by human hands, and that it has to work, perfectly, every time, or there is a very real possibility that people will die and billions of dollars in equipment will be lost.

I admire that passion and that almost-fanatical devotion to a cause, to something larger than oneself. The knowledge that you are contributing to a great undertaking, something that pushes the boundaries of the human experience, and makes much of the petty squabbling seem, well, so petty.

In any case, as G-Fav is often captivated by the visual and aesthetic qualities of art and film, I find that I am very often drawn to the auditory components...I've often thought that my life would be better if it had a soundtrack. This film is no different. The composer, Phillip Sheppard, manages to create a score that wonderfully captures the notion of a grand endeavour, of a time and place in our history when a multitude of forces came together just perfectly and allowed us as a people to transcend what we are.

Nothing captures this more beautifully that the liftoff of the Saturn V. At once elegant and clumsy, graceful and yet brutally powerful, the Saturn V represented (and some still believe represents) the pinnacle of human rocket design. 7.5 million pounds of thrust, with millions of interconnected parts that all must work perfectly, or else people die. Sheppard sets the breathtaking visual of the Saturn V launch against this beautiful score that I think brillantly captures the beauty and building momentum of a launch, as well as the hopes, dreams, and sweat of the generation that made it happen. Watching this scene in the film left me in tears. If you are an engineer, see this film - it is inspiring.

Getting there is the easy part...

2007-07-19T21:59:00.000-04:00

I read a fascinating article tonight on some of the challenges associated with a crewed Mars mission. I've read several books and articles on all of the standard problems that people think of when they think about sending humans to Mars: Launch weight restrictions, fuel restrictions, transit time, resource usage on-flight and on-mission, but it turns out that a lot of people have taken for granted one of the most obvious hurdles: actually landing on Mars.

Turns out that because the density of Mars' atmosphere is so low (1/100 that of Earth), landing large payloads, like you would need to land humans on the surface, is a very difficult proposition. Basically, the atmosphere is not dense enough to create enough drag on a large spacecraft to slow it sufficiently to use traditional landing techniques (parachutes, space shuttle-style lifting bodies) before you are a crater. Techniques that have been used to land on Mars previously, like deceleration thrusters (Viking) or airbags (Sojourner, MER) are either not powerful enough or expose the spacecraft to unacceptably high G-forces (10-20 G) that would kill human occupants. On the flip side, the Apollo-style lunar lander would also not be useful because in that case, Mars has too much atmosphere for a straight thruster-only descent - you would create very dangerous and unpredictable forces due to the interaction of the rocket plume with the atmosphere - something you didn't have on the airless moon.

So, there is this huge gap in knowledge that they are trying to figure out. How do you slow a 100 metric ton spacecraft from 7-10 km/s to under Mach 1 without killing everyone in the process? Turns out that might be the hardest thing about getting people on Mars.

Link to the article.

Is this what being an adult is?

2007-07-13T12:52:00.000-04:00

/rant

Sigh. Does everyone else worry *all the time*? I am beginning to wonder whether or not I am just have a personality that is inclined to worry, or if it is some fundamental aspect of the human condition. I worry about being a fraud at my profession, I worry about not working hard enough to get tenure, I worry when I am away from work that I should be working harder, I worry when I am at work that life is too short and I am focused on the wrong things. I worry about having enough money to pay all the bills, I worry about various and mundane things about my personal life that I have varying degrees of control over...

In short, I seem to worry alot, and it seems to be taking a lot out of me. I try to stop and smell the roses, but then worry that I stopped too long. I always have this underlying feeling that I should be doing something. I find it very hard to just "turn off" and relax, because when I do, the worry kicks in and I feel like I am somehow wasting important time that I could be reading another article or cleaning the bathroom...

When does this happen to people? I don't remember being like this when I was younger. Maybe I was and I just don't realize it. Maybe I have absolutely unrealistic expectations of how life is supposed to be, but if this is it, it kind of sucks, and I'd like a refund, a do-over, or a personality adjustment.

Anyway, nothing to see here. We now return you to your regularly scheduled surfing.

/end rant

Good (Professional) News...

2007-07-05T14:11:00.000-04:00

Finally, after almost four years, two spent without any laboratory space, a Big Government Institution/Agency has decided to fund my work. The holy grail has been found - government funding. They sliced and diced the hell out of the budget, but my ideas (and my co-PI's ideas) survived the peer review process and actually got recommended for funding. My co-PI had recently served on a review panel and came back forlorn that out of the multitude (30-50) of proposals that had been reviewed, only two were recommended for funding. That gives you an idea of how bad the funding landscape is out there right now, and also why we feel pretty damn good about ourselves today, even if the proposed budget was cut back to the bone - we still managed to eke out two full years of RA support on it.

I got back to my office around 10 AM after teaching my summer class and saw the voicemail light blinking, which I usually hate to see since it invariably means that someone wants something from me or that I have to deal with people. I've really taken a shine to not coming into the office during the summer and working from home. You can imagine my surprise and delight when it actually was someone wanting to give me something for a change!

So, today feels like a pretty good day, professionally, and those days seem to be few and far between, so I think I'll enjoy this.

Vacation Nerdiness

2007-06-22T17:39:00.000-04:00

I find that I enjoy historic things much more now that I am older...case in point: Washington, D.C.. I recall being here as a child, and I imagine I looked every bit as bored as many of the adolescents that I see wandering around the city here in step behind their parents. Now however, after having developed a penchant for U.S. political history and being a big nerd in general, I find that I am having a much greater appreciation of things.

Today I visited the (relatively) new Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum Annex of the Smithsonian, out by Dulles. One of the best museum experiences I've had. The architecture and layout are top-notch, the exhibits are all in excellent shape and laid out in interesting displays, and the museum itself was spacious and relatively uncrowded for a Friday in the summer, which made it much easier to take one's time and read placards and such. Here's a photo of me standing by the Space Shuttle Enterprise.

I also visited the Washington Monument the other day. I have this really great photo of my grandfather in D.C. in the 1940's, looking much more dapper than I, sitting on a bench at the corner of the monument. I found the same spot (you can match the patterns in the stone and everything), and took a picture there myself. Same location, about 60 years removed. Kind of gave me the chills. :-)

Also went and saw a Nationals game at the soon-to-be-defunct RFK stadium. I forget how nice it is, living in Boston, that in some cities you can just go the day before or the day of and get really good tickets (third-base side in this case). This is of course very unlike Boston, where you have to plan months in advance to see any game and just pray for good weather. Oh well, I guess that is the price you pay to have a team in contention.

Lastly, this was one photo that was just to good to pass up...

Well La-Dee-Da...

2007-04-12T20:43:00.000-04:00

You might remember last year around this time that I wrote about being awarded the departmental teaching award, and how that was really a great thing for someone who hasn't been in the business that long.

I recently found out that this year the former chair put me up for the college-wide teaching award, and I apparently have been awarded that in my first year being nominated.

In the intervening year I have learned a lot more about academics, and specifically, what is valued at my university. I can say with a high degree of certainty that it is not teaching, especially under the direction of the new chair. So while I am grateful to those who nominated me this year, I am considerably less excited about this than I feel I should be.

I came across this while doing some reading on the subject of tenure:

At present the universities are as uncongenial to teaching as the Mojave Desert to a clutch of Druid priests. If you want to restore a Druid priesthood you cannot do it by offering prizes for Druid-of-the-year. If you want Druids, you must grow forests. - William Arrowsmith

Yeah.

Mad World

2007-02-22T23:31:00.000-05:00

A student of mine sings in an student a cappella group, and last week they were selling CD's as a fundraiser. I've always rather enjoyed a cappella, so I went ahead and bought a copy. It is a pretty eclectic mix, but there is one song I have just been drawn to and am playing over and over. So much so that I went to iTunes and bought the instrumental version of it.

The original group was Tears for Fears, but I found that I totally didn't like the original version. The student a cappella version is based on the Michael Andrews/Gary Jules version that was apparently featured in the cult hit movie Donnie Darko, which I've never seen. There is just something about the vocals and the lyrics of this version that I find hypnotizing.

"Mad World"
- originally by Tears for Fears, covered by Andrews/Jules

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces

Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression

Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me

Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World

G-man, I think you'd like this - iTunes Link

Memory

2007-02-04T22:42:00.000-05:00

A funny memory came to me unbidden tonight. I got home after watching a decidedly lame Superbowl with my sister, and I was making a cup of tea. I had put the milk out to add to the tea after it had steeped a bit. I went about doing some other chores, and eventually came back to get my tea.

As I walked back into the kitchen, I noticed the milk still on the counter, and a phrase from the days of old, back at The Mag, popped into my head:

"Why are we punishing this milk?"

I laughed out loud. Thanks g-fav.

Now that's some fucking math...

2006-11-22T00:13:00.000-05:00

I'm currently reading The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene. It attempts to be an entry-level introduction to modern superstring theory and contemporary quantum mechanics, and so far I have found it quite enjoyable and accessible, especially considering that I am not a physicist by training. As I was in bed tonight reading about the possibilities of there being more than the three commonly observed spatial dimensions, I came across a passage that had the following footnote:

For the mathematically inclined reader we note that a Calabi-Yau manifold is a complex Kähler manifold with vanishing first Chern class. In 1957 Calabi conjectured that every such manifold admits a Ricci-flat metric, and in 1977 Yau proved this to be true...we note that this particular Calabi-Yau space is a real three-dimensional slice through the quintic hypersurface in complex projective four-space.

It's a good thing that I took that multi-dimensional topology class as a pass/no record back in grad school. Yeah. I have to make sure I work "quintic hypersurface" into more everyday conversations.

Chocolate

2006-10-21T23:05:00.000-04:00

Chocolate
By Snow Patrol, The Last Kiss Soundtrack

This could be the very minute
I'm aware I'm alive
All these places feel like home

With a name I'd never chosen
I can make my first steps
As a child of 25

This is the straw, final straw in the
Roof of my mouth as I lie to you
Just because I'm sorry doesn't mean
I didn't enjoy it at the time

You're the only thing that I love
It scares me more every day
On my knees I think clearer

Goodness knows I saw it coming
Or at least I'll claim I did
But in truth I'm lost for words

What have I done it's too late for that
What have I become truth is nothing yet
A simple mistake starts the hardest time
I promise I'll do anything you ask...this time

iTunes Link

Where did the summer go???

2006-10-20T10:26:00.000-04:00

Wow, it is hard to believe that it is almost November! With teaching this summer, it really felt like everything from July on was a big blur. I just received the student feedback reports from that summer semester, which I was very interested in seeing. I hadn't taught a summer class up to that point, and the pace and format were very different from a regular semester, so I was interested to see what the students thought of it, and if it would have any effect on their feedback for me. I was pleased to discover that they were overall very happy with the course, with several people commenting that they felt they learned a lot and understood things well, despite the shortened format. The biggest complaint, by far, is the textbook, which I also happen to loathe. Unfortunately, the class I teach is a two-part class, and I usually teach one part or the other, but not both simulataneously. We haven't gotten around to sitting down and agreeing on a new textbook, but it is on my list of things to do.

After the summer session, it was a bit of vacation, then a conference, and then right into the fall semester. The fall semester has been tough - I am teaching a junior-level course that really should be earlier in the curriculum, and I have the same set of students in a section of their engineering laboratory course. Each class and group of students have their own personality, and I am definitely struggling a lot for the first time with the undergrads. This particular group is small (18 students, compared to the 30+ I normally have), and their attitude and motivation level are very poor. They just had their first exam, and the average was the lowest it has ever been for one of my tests - squarely in the 'D' range. As a result, they are not a happy group of campers, but don't really seem to care (on the whole) about doing better...Frustrating to say the least.

Other than that, I have had my time eaten up by two new graduate students, both of whom are head and shoulders improvements over the two that they replaced. These two are engaged and eager to learn and work. We actually had a group meeting yesterday where we critically reviewed a paper from the literature - that was a first! I guess I am paying for this newfound promise with the grad students with a rough semester with the undergraduates. In addition, I somehow find myself advising three undergraduate extracurriculuars, one graduate extracurricular, and serving on a bunch of committees, including a new university senate committee on campus life. When did I get so involved? It's insidious.

What this means is that I really feel like I haven't seen anyone in months, and for that, I am truly sorry. Those that know me in the real world know that my personal life has undergone some major changes lately, so I think I have thrown myself more into the work. I am sorry if people out there feel like I dropped of the face of the earth. Everything will take some re-adjusting and re-getting-used-to, but I hope that we can all reconnect in the near future, and thanks for keeping in touch even when it feels like I haven't.

In other news, it looks like the Democrats may have an actual chance to take back the House, if not the Senate. I am not saying I am a huge fan of the Democrats, but as my grandfather used to say: "The Republicans will screw you blind, and so will the Democrats, but at least the Democrats will throw the little guy a bone once in a while." I have been following the races primarily at electoral-vote.com, and am pleased as punch that Pennsylvania's junior senator, Rick Santorum, is about 10 points behind his challenger, Bob Casey. Rick Santorum is about as arrogant and bigoted a person as they come, and I was always thoroughly embarassed that he represented my home state. Good riddance.

Another interesting thing I read this week was an article on some of these online 'persistant world' type of games, like 'World of Warcraft', among others. This blog talks about the life of an addicted gamer, and how he lost a lot of his life until he walked away from the game. He was spending almost 30-40 hours a week playing this game, and the subtext is that this has the potential to become an addiction like anything else done to excess.

Cover letters from Hell: here and here. How are these people ever employed at all with these kind of letters?

Lastly, let's all prevent our children from ever experiencing anything at all: A Massachusetts school bans tag. I'm glad I grew up when I did. We used to play a game on the playground called 'Suicide', where you would throw a tennis ball against the wall, and someone would have to catch the rebound. If that person bungled the catch, he had to run as fast as he could and tag the wall before someone else drilled him with the tennis ball. I'd love to see how this game would fair in today's climate.

Wow, that's the most I've written in a while. Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Dammit

2006-10-14T20:12:00.000-04:00

Yale edges Lehigh in overtime, 26-20

Ah, the fearsome matchup that is Ivy vs. Patriot League play.

More Amazing Pictures

2006-10-12T12:30:00.000-04:00

Earth as seen from Cassini, in orbit around Saturn. We're in the upper right, between the rings. In the inset, the slight bulge in the upper left is the moon.

The Space Shuttle and Space Station as silhouetted against the sun, taken from a ground-based observatory.

Both are of these are from Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Latest From Mars...

2006-10-06T17:27:00.000-04:00

Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) photographs the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity on the surface of Mars.

We are taking pictures of a spacecraft we sent to another planet with a different spacecraft that we sent to the same planet. I think few people appreciate not only how amazing this is, but also how difficult.

If only more people were excited about this instead of Paris Hilton, or sports teams, or other mindless dreck.

NASA rules.

Outsourcing Run Amok

2006-09-29T15:10:00.000-04:00

Sigh.

Now we can't even tutor our kids domestically?

TutorVista

Can anyone tell me what we DO do in this country anymore, other than worry about who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, who got booted on "Dancing With the Stars", or sitting around stuffing our faces with fast food?

Sheesh.

When India and China are producing scientists and engineers at a rate five times greater than you are, it's time to ask why our kids don't like science and math enough to choose it as a career. I can speak from first hand experience, as the graduate students I see come through here are incredibly weak in math skills if they are domestic. The foriegn students are simply kicking our asses.

I wish I knew what to do to make it better, but by the time they get to college, and have chosen engineering, there isn't much more I can say.

OK. End of rant.

I am a big dork

2006-09-19T20:54:00.000-04:00

Find more here

Everything Had Changed

2006-09-18T21:55:00.000-04:00

Everything Had Changed
Barenaked Ladies; "Barenaked Ladies Are Me"

On the path of life I wish you well
Divergent journeys, but we will meet again in Hell
I kept my head down and moved on
'Till every friend I'd known was gone

Then, one day I was not alone
Everything had changed
Everything was strange

When in rags and when in wealth
A solemn promise never to give too much of myself
Despite the hopeful things I've said
I lived my life inside my head

Then, one day I was not alone
Everything had changed
Everything was strange

I hold my breath
And count to ten
I hate it now; Hated it then
I've seen it all before
A failure and a bore
But that's what friends are for

So it seems I must have won
As I survey the ashes of the damage that I've done
Everyone I've ever known
Is just as closed off and alone

Then, one day I was not alone
Everything had changed
Everything was strange

Everything had changed
Everything was strange

Everything had changed
Everything was strange

Everything had changed
Everything

I love it all. Lyrics, accordian, cello, banjo, and fingers snapping.

iTunes link

Sigh.

2006-09-18T11:46:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, it's hard to have faith that people are basically good.

Rolling Stone Article

Like the bumper sticker says "If you aren't outraged, you haven't been paying attention."

Take it Back

2006-09-14T21:24:00.000-04:00

Take it Back
Barenaked Ladies

It's hard enough to notice
Harder still to react
Just a stone's throw from the center of attention
We all fade to black

Save me from a villainous imagination
Deliver me from my friends
If I said something to make you mad
I will take it back

It's hard enough to stomach
But try to look away
Is this a news report or a trailer from a motion picture?
It all fades to gray

Save me from a villainous imagination
Deliver me from my friends
If I said something to make you mad
I will take it back

Long lines and warning signs
Think of all the lives saved by plastic knives
It's naïve, but make believe
We will never lose if we remove our shoes

It's hard to keep your mouth shut
Harder still to make noise
But we can't have the perfect 20/20 hindsight
That our fate enjoys

Save me from a villainous imagination
Deliver me from my friends
If I said something to make you mad
I will take it back
I will take it back...

Absolutely love the piano...

iTunes link

Vacation, Conferences, Work

2006-09-06T11:35:00.000-04:00

I haven't been to work in almost three weeks. And I really don't miss it. The first two weeks were vacation, and somehow, I managed to pack a lot in. I spent some time at home, a day in Philadelphia, a weekend in New Jersey for a friend's bachelor party, a day in New York, and a few days in Martha's Vineyard. I then proceeded to fly to the west coast for a conference in Santa Barbara, where I am now. So, this is week three, and conference week, but in Santa Barbara, it's pretty hard for anything to really feel like work. The conference is at UCSB, which is on the freaking beach. I really don't know how anyone gets any work done here - it's gorgeous. I know if I was a student here or a faculty member, I would definitely have more of a tan.

The conference is interesting, as I am only peripherally involved in the main field that is the focus of the meeting. I submitted an abstract on a whim because it seemed like an interesting conference in an interesting place, and I was a little surprised when my paper was accepted. I have found a lot of the talks extremely interesting, as they are not really in my direct field of knowledge or expertise. I listened to one talk yesterday where a researcher was discussing the difficulty that the human brain has in healing after trauma - human axons typically do not re-grow through scar tissue, so traumatic brain injury often leads to significant impairment. He and his group developed a technique by which they could induce the brain to heal in such a way as to prevent scarring, and allow axonal re-growth through the area of injury. They demonstrated this by damaging the part of the brain responsible for vision in hamsters, rendering the hamsters blind. The hamsters didn't respond to any visual stimuli after the injury. The control group was allowed to heal without intervention, and they showed no improvement in vision with time. The experimental group received the treatment and over a period of several weeks regained vision up to about 70% of their original acuity as the brain essentially re-grew their optic nerve. To someone without a bioscience background, this borders on "Star Trek-ian" to me.

After the evening reception, I was invited out to dinner with some other young faculty. What followed was a fun evening of discussion and talk about work and research, but I have to admit I felt somewhat out of my element as all of these folks were from significantly higher-tier institutions than me. Like, the top universities in the world.

All in all it has been a really good conference so far - I have done the most networking and talking that I have done at a conference, and while my level of discomfort is fairly high, I am also learning a lot, and hopefully will come home with some new ideas and new potential collaborators.

Some photos:

The National Constitution Museum, Philadelphia, PA:

Looking up through the Glass Apple Cube, 5th Avenue, New York:

Aquinnah Lighthouse, Martha's Vineyard, MA:

East Beach, Santa Barbara, CA

Just a House, Not a Home...

2006-08-27T18:25:00.000-04:00

Sometimes things are just things.

Glass, Concrete and Stone
David Byrne and Brian Eno

Now
I'm wakin' at the crack of dawn
to send a little money home
from here to the moon
is risin' like a discotheque
and now my bags are down and packed for traveling

Lookin' at happiness
keepin' my flavor fresh
nobody knows I guess
how far I'll go, I know
so I'm leavin' at Six O' Clock
meet in a parkin' lot
Harriet Hendershot
sunglasses on, she waits by this

Glass and concrete and stone
It is just a house, not a home.

Skin, that covers me from head to toe
except a couple tiny holes and openings
Where, the city's blowin' in and out
this is what it's all about, delightfully

Everything's possible
when you're an animal
not inconceivable
How things can change, I know

So I'm puttin' on aftershave
nothin' is out of place
gonna be on my way
Try to pretend, it's not only

Glass and concrete and stone
That it's just a house, not a home.
And its glass and concrete and stone

It is just a house, not a home
And my head is fifty feet high
Let my body and soul be my guide

iTunes link

Lobsters Galore!

2006-08-17T23:18:00.000-04:00

Every year, my department hosts a big social event at the end of the summer semester. There are burgers, hot dogs, soda, chips, corn-on-the-cob, and of course, lobsters. This is probably one of the biggest events that the department puts on, and one of the few events that brings everyone (undergrads, grad students, faculty, staff, and alumni) all together. I have been involved in the planning and execution of this event since I started at the university a few years back (was it really three whole years ago?), and after missing it last year because of the death of my grandfather, it was nice to be back manning the grill this afternoon and evening.

My main contribution this year, besides the grilling and some planning, was finding what I must admit are some pretty kick-ass lobster balloons at the local supermarket. They captured the mood of the day perfectly, and coupled with good weather, made this one of the best events in recent memory. I am glad that it went well - it was a nice cap-off to what has been a rather tumultuous summer. Tomorrow I finish grading my final exam (that I gave this morning), turn in my summer grades, and then I am getting out of town for a few weeks: some vacation, topped of with a week-long California conference the first week in September. So, three whole weeks away from life as it is right now. Thank God.

Summertime

2006-07-11T14:01:00.000-04:00

A rare mid-day blog post. Yesterday was one of those days that just wouldn't end. It was stacked with class and meetings from beginning to end.

I did have one free moment, though, as I was walking from one meeting to the next. It was a beautiful day out and I sat for a moment on a bench outside my laboratory building. At that moment, I heard the sound of a locust in the tree - you know that sort of weird, Doppler-effect-y, morroccas-shaking sound they make? It was instantly picked up by other locusts in other trees, and it instantly transported me back to my childhood, when I would be outside playing in the summer. It would be August, and it would be hot, and the air would be calm and still and oppressive. I would be playing in the kiddie pool, or with the hose or sprinkler, trying to keep cool outside as my grandmother watched over my sister and I playing. We would avoid going in the house which my father kept at a draconianly low temperature during the summer (he loved his AC). And above it all, I remember the sounds of locusts on the air, disturbed by no other sound. That sound is so summer to me, and I so rarely hear it living in suburban Boston.

The other thing I miss is lightning bugs, or fireflies. We used to have thousands of them at home in the early to mid summer, lighting up the trees and the grass. We could catch twenty or thirty a night and keep them in old jelly jars with grass and air holes punched in the lid. They don't seem to like it this far north, because I have lived here almost eight years now, and have yet to see a lightning bug in suburban Boston.

In other news, class is going well, but trying to sandwich 14 weeks of a regular semester course into 6 weeks is a challenge. I feel like I never stop talking once I hit the classroom.

Finding the Zone

2006-07-05T21:05:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, G-Fav had a post about "Flow", that state where everything just sort of clicks and you fire on all cylinders. Time sort of fades into the background and before you know it hours have passed.

I have always felt at home in the front of a classroom, ever since my first lecture back in 2004. Today I started teaching a condensed 6-week summer course, and when I started talking at 8 AM this morning to a bunch of bleary-eyed students back for their first class in 6 months, I experienced "Flow".

I am increasingly convinced that I really do love teaching, and that I am good at it. A week ago I received my teaching evals for the spring semester. This was the second time that I had taught this subject, and I didn't have as good a feel for that group of students as I had for the first group that I taught in that subject. The first group I taught this particular class to I had taught in a previous prerequisite, and as such had established a relationship with them; they knew me and my expectations, I knew them and their abilities, and we co-existed quite well. They were hard working, dedicated students and they liked me and I them. I had excellent teaching evals that semester.

This past spring I taught the course again, to students that I had not had in the prerequisite course, and as such, we had no pre-existing relationship. They are a good class, but were much more reticent and harder to get to know. I had to work a lot harder to draw them out and engage them, and we definitely did not have the easy give-and-take that I enjoyed with the previous group. I fully expected that my evals for that offering would be lower than for the previous group.

I was pleasantly surprised when they were actually higher. It was a nice reaffirmation of my abilities, and some subtle proof to myself that the first set of evals from a particular group of students wasn't a fluke or beginners' luck. My teaching evaluations have consistently been very good; so good in fact that the Dean recently talked to my department head about getting me involved in teaching some freshman sections to shore up some problem areas.

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague of mine a week or so ago. We both started at the university at the same time, both are assistant professors on the tenure track, and approximately the same age. Our careers, though, seem destined to take very different paths. She loves working with her graduate students, writing grant proposals, and collaborating with other scholars in many different areas. She is a good teacher, and does a minimal amount of service activities. She had a super-big-name advisor in graduate school, and has many former labmates in academia. She gets invited to give talks, and is well regarded as a scholar in her field.

I on the other hand, have struggled mightily with being a scholar in my field. My former advisor is also well known in her field, but it is a field that fostered many natural collaborations with industry, and few of her students went into academia until very recently. I struggle a great deal with being a mentor and advisor to my three graduate students, and I absolutely loathe grant writing, and have difficulty 'selling' my ideas to potential funding agencies. I am however, I think, an above-average teacher, devote much of my time and energy to the undergraduate program, advise several undergraduate groups, and am in general very involved in service activities at the department, college, and university level.

Which one of us will get tenure? Both of us? Neither? It seems hard to say right now. It seems clear from a variety of workshops and other mentoring events that I attend that the types of contributions that she is making are more highly regarded by the college and the university. I realize that I am certainly not the first person to feel like this, but some days it feels incredibly unfair that my contributions are not as highly regarded because the results are less tangible.

It seems especially wrong on a morning when I walk into a classroom, establish a presence, and get a bunch of sophomores who haven't been in school for over six months to laugh and be interested in thermodynamics at eight in the morning.

Musical Review

2006-06-26T22:37:00.000-04:00

I am a huge fan of the Sci-Fi channel's Battlestar Galactica -- in my opinion, one of the smartest, most daring shows to be on the air in the last ten years. The developer and executive producer is Ronald Moore, formerly of Star Trek fame.

One of the things that I love about the show is actually its score. I don't know whether it is because they are on cable, and therefore have a smaller order of shows, that the quality tends to be higher, or if the their music director and composer is just a genius.

Most of the music for the first two seasons has been written and scored by Bear McCreary. I bought the CD's for the miniseries and Season 1 a few months back, and have thoroughly enjoyed them. Season 1 of BSG was as good an inaugural season as a show could have, but Season 2 really was outstanding, and the music really picked it up a notch as well, in that the themes I think were better defined and more memorable.

I just received the Season 2 soundtrack in the mail this past weekend (sorry, kiddies, not available on iTunes!), and I must say, I can't stop listening to it. The entire album is excellent, and unlike the first season, I can remember most of the specific scenes in the show where the music appears. I find this interesting, because the music itself is not generally intrusive into the storyline, but it is indeed memorable.

Two tracks in particular really move me. The first is "Roslin and Adama" (warning: music clip) This is used in the episode "Resurrection Ship, Parts 1 and 2", and plays during two scenes in which two of the main characters, Roslin (played by Mary McDonnell) and Adama (played by Edward James Olmos) interact. The first two minutes are incredibly emotionally evocative to me, with slow, mournful strings and a low piano subtext, as Roslin lies dying of terminal cancer and Adama has come to see her. The last minute waxes more hopeful, with a stirring synth guitar representing some hope, as Roslin promotes Adama to admiral after the events of the episode. It's hard to convey in words, but this particular piece is quite possibly one of the most emotionally rich pieces I have ever heard.

The second track that I love is "Prelude to War" (again, warning: music clip). The first three minutes of this track are from the episode "Pegasus". At the end of this episode, the Galactica and the Pegasus are about to square off against one another, and the music is a frenetic undertone to the conversation going back and forth between the two commanders as tensions escalate. The piece is laden with violins, which start out rapid, and only get more frenzied as the piece moves on, mirroring the escalating threat of violence. It strongly reminds me of the "Winter" movement from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" in terms of sheer rapidity and virtuousity in violin playing. At about the three-minute mark, the violence finally erupts into outright hostilities, and the music reflects this by breaking into what the internets commonly refer to as "the poundy drums of doom", and the listener is treated to a really great, violent, primal, visceral drum beat that appears and reappears throughout the peice. It is a great track to listen to on the road after a long day, to let some steam off. This show has some of the best use of percussion of any soundtrack in recent memory.

Those are just two examples off of the CD, but in reality the whole thing is great. If you are a fan of the show, I think it is a must-have. If you just like emotionally evocative music, then give it a try.

The Result

2006-05-30T22:29:00.000-04:00

After a week of tidying and a visit from the junk men, this was the result:

I hope to relieve myself of most of my crap before I depart this world, and not leave it for others to clean up.

Basement

2006-05-24T09:13:00.000-04:00

Been home for a few days now, and they have been busy ones. My primary task has been cleaning up the basement, as seen below.

A good portion of all of this is essentially junk from my grandfather's home that needed a quick place to go after his passing last summer, and the rest of it is stuff that my Mom just kind of put at the bottom of the stairs in order to not have to actually go into the basement proper.

In any case, I have been to Lowe's several times, and have assembled quite a few shelving units in an attempt at organizing what we intend to keep. I also scheduled an appointment with the 1-800-GOT-JUNK.com people to come on Thursday and remove a lot of the old furniture that my grandfather had and is beyond salvage. An example of this would be the two 1940's era sofas that have absolutely no spring or support left to them.

There is some furniture that we are keeping - a beautiful rock maple dining room set and a solid mahogany bedroom set, complete with sleigh bed. Both are in serious need of refinishing (Pop-pop was a wonderful man, but like a bull in a china shop, and very hard on furniture), so maybe that will be a project of mine at some point in the future.

Vacationing

2006-05-21T17:42:00.000-04:00

I am off visiting home and family in PA for a week or so, taking some much needed time off. I will be teaching a fairly condensed course (6 weeks for a core engineering class!) during the second half of the summer, so really, June is about it in terms of any real freedom this summer.

I kicked off this brief respite with an interleague baseball game between the Red Sox and the Phillies on Saturday evening. It is telling that you have to go out of town to see the Red Sox play a baseball game, but it was fun to see a new park and the team on the road. I was with some old and dear college friends of mine, who are much bigger sports fans than I am in general, and who have no compunction about jetting off all over the place to see various teams play. Both are season ticket holders for a variety of sports, and one is even flying off to Germany next month to see the soccer World Cup matches. That is a fan. In any case, the upside for me is that I can occasionally score tickets for things. In this case, I provided lodging at my family's home in PA in exchange for the ticket, and everyone was happy.

The Sox put up an impressive victory, with Josh Beckett on the mound for the Sox. He helped his own cause by driving in two runs, one on a solo home run, the first home run by a Sox pitcher since the institution of the DH in the American League.

By far the most amusing part of the evening, though, (for me) came in the bottom of the seventh inning. I was waiting in line at the concession stand, and there was amother and daughter in front of me. The daughter was a little girl maybe 6 or 7 years old, and she was as precocious and outspoken a child as I have seen in quite some time. She had longish curly brown hair, capped off by a pink Phillies visor, which she was quite proud of.

As we were standing there waiting, she confidently looked up and me and asked "Do I know you from somewhere?" This is amusing to me for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of the age of the questioner. I smiled and looked down at her and answered that I didn't think so, because I was from Boston, and I thought I would remember having met a seven-year old at some point. She then proceeded to give me her name, her mother's name, and pretty much her life story after confidently reaching out and shaking my hand.

She was like a little bundle of energy, darting from topic to topic, telling me about school, and how she broke her arm by falling off a slide that she was walking up the wrong way. She was amazed and amused when I told her that I had also broken my arm between the summer of first and second grades this same way. At this point I was squatting down a bit so I could look her in the eyes as I was talking to her, and she pointed to the little tuft of hair that usually sticks out from the top of my t-shirt. She seemed delighted that I apparently had a hairy chest, gave it a tug and proceeded to make sure her mom knew too.

We were talking about the game a a little bit, and I gleefully pointed out that my team was winning, and gave her a little wink and stuck my tongue out. She responded in kind just as her mother looked down at her and chastized her (gently) for sticking her tongue out at strangers. I 'fessed up that I started it, her mom smiled and collected their food and started to lead the little girl back to her seat, but not before she shook my hand again and I told her what a pleasure it had been to meet her.

I know that little girls can be just as much of a terror as little boys, but somehow I can't imagine having that particular conversation with a similarly-aged little boy. She was a cutie, and made the night.

Rainy Sunday Afternoon...

2006-05-14T17:02:00.000-04:00

'Cause you can't jump the track, we're all cars on a cable,
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table.
No one can find the rewind button, boys,
So cradle your head in your hands,
And breathe, just breathe,
Oh breathe, just breathe...

There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout
'Cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out...
These mistakes you've made, you'll just make them again
If you only try turning around.

-- "Breathe (2 A.M.)" by Anna Nalick

ABC Meme

2006-04-26T21:33:00.000-04:00

I am going to jump on this even later than La Lecturess

Accent: *I* don't think that I have one, but several people I know tell me that I sound like a Philadelphian at times. Especially with the pronunciation of 'water', which I am told I pronounce 'wooter'. That annoys me, as I have never been a fan of the Philadelphia accent. (Sorry to all of you Philadelphians out there reading).

Booze: Hmmmm. I don't actually drink that often, and when I do, it is often unfortunately to excess. I guess the most memorable of these events involves mojitos. Really strong mojitos. Mojitos it is.

Chore I Hate: Scrubbing really crusty caked on grime on pots and pans.

Dog or Cat: Definitely dogs.

Essential Electronics: Cell phone, laptop, iPod, GPS nav system.

Favorite Cologne(s): Don't typically wear it, but Chanel for men if I do.

Gold or Silver: Gold.

Hometown: Increasingly Upscale Town, PA.

Insomnia: Nope. I love to sleep, and generally sleep quite well unless I am very, very stressed.

Job Title: Assistant Professor.

Kids: I agree with Lecturess: I can barely take care of myself.

Living arrangements: Single-family home.

Most admirable trait: I think I am an intensely loyal person.

Number of sexual partners: What, kiss and tell? Don't think so.

Overnight hospital stays: A few. First grade, a smattering of times since then. Mostly healthy.

Phobias: I don't know if I have anything that I would categorize as a phobia. I generally have a fear or an uneasiness about the unknown, and have a tendency to overanalyze things, which can lead to 'analysis paralysis'. Is that more of a neurosis than a phobia? Alright then, I also fear death and failure.

Quote: "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." Carl Sagan

Religion: Lapsed Catholic.

Siblings: One younger sister.

Time I wake up: I usually wake up between 5:30 AM and 6:30 AM, which I hate. I usually get up on work days between 7 and 8 AM.

Unusual talent or skill: Does making plasma count?

Vegetable I refuse to eat: A toss up between brussel sprouts and lima beans.

Worst habit: I get frustrated fairly easily and have a tendency to swear at inanimate objects. I also overanalyze, which I may have mentioned before.

X-rays: Ankle, right arm, teeth.

Yummy foods I make: Glazed pork chops. Pumpkin pie from scratch. Spinach-and-feta-stuffed chicken. Pumpkin soup served in pumpkin shells. Omelets.

Zodiac sign: Aquarius

Why I Love Apple...

2006-04-11T21:08:00.000-04:00

Last night, I got home late from work, and as I was taking my phone out of my pocket, I dropped it squarely on the keyboard of my laptop. It hit the 'R' key with a rather loud 'crack', and the 'R' key popped right off, the little clips that hold it on the keyboard broken off. Great.

I never realized how much one uses the 'R' key in the course of daily typing until I had a gaping hole in my keyboard that completely threw off my typing rhythm.

I checked a few places online, and found a few that sold replacement keys for about $9.00 plus shipping and handling. This seemed like a lot for one little key. Since I have the laptop under extended warranty (I always buy the extended coverage for a laptop - too much can go wrong, but I have been lucky - 3 years and counting with no major problems), I decided to call the company and see if there was another solution.

I spoke to Justin in tech support, and he was very helpful, but said that they don't, as a rule of thumb, stock individual keys for replacement. If I wanted to have it fixed, I would need to 1.) Send the entire laptop to Houston 2.) Have the entire keyboard replaced 3.) Pay for it out-of-pocket, since user damage isn't covered by the warranty. This would also require me to be without the computer for seven to ten business days. This seemed like a less-than-optimal solution, and even Justin agreed that it probably wasn't worth it.

Enter the local Apple Store, in Burlington, MA. I called them after I finished with the main company, and asked them if they could do individual key replacements. They said they probably could, and it would just depend upon whether or not they had any keys of the right type. They told me to come by this evening. I went online and made a reservation at the Genius Bar for 7:30 PM. I showed up at 7:15 and my name was already up on the little electronic board there. A very nice Genius, whose name I didn't catch, came over and asked me what the trouble was, and I showed her. She smiled, went in the back, and re-emerged with a big box of broken keyboards. She found one that matched my keyboard, popped off the 'R' key, and had it installed on my computer in less than two minutes. She asked if there was anything else she could help me with. I said no, and she smiled and sent me on my way. Free of charge.

It's the little things like that that make me a loyal Apple customer. That, and the fact that I spent the morning trying to install some software under Windows XP, and the cryptic error message I kept receiving was "Could not communicate with device because data received". What the hell does that even mean?

In any case, Apple Store Burlington rocks. And I have a nice new 'R' key. :-)

Self-Congratulatory Post

2006-03-30T23:06:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted, mainly because I have been insanely busy at work. Tonight, though, I am rather happy about a turn of events, and wanted to share.

Every year, the College of Engineering at my university hosts an awards banquet in the spring at the local science museum. Every year, the seniors in each discipline elect one of the faculty in their discipline as professor of the year. This year's graduating seniors were the first class that I taught when I arrived at my university, and I had the distinct pleasure of teaching that same group in two different classes. I really felt a connection with them, and have followed their academic careers with pride, especially as several are going on to excellent graduate institutions.

And, I am especially humbled, touched, and moved by the fact that tonight they elected me the Omega Chi Epsilon Chemical Engineering Professor of the Year.

Yay me. :-) I am an educator. And a damn good one.

New Horizons...

2006-02-03T21:35:00.000-05:00

I recently finished reading a new book by Dava Sobel called "The Planets". I picked it up after Christmas with some gift card money mainly because I have read one of Sobel's previous works (Galileo's Daughter) and had enjoyed it immensely. "The Planets" is basically just a series of interesting vignettes about each one of the planets in turn, from Mercury through Pluto.

Pluto has had a lot of attention lately. NASA just launched its New Horizons mission, scheduled to do a flyby of Pluto in about 2015 and then go on to study at least one other Kuiper Belt object. I always find these long-duration space missions fascinating, especially one this long. The Mars rovers only took a number of months to reach their destination, though the planning and behind-the-scenes wrangling took years. The Pluto mission is going to take *9 years* just to get where it is going, and it is traveling faster than any previous space probe ever launched. To give you an idea of how big the solar system is, it is going to reach Jupiter in 2007 for a gravity assist, and then take another 8 years to get to Pluto, even with that boost in speed.

Pluto is the only planet in the solar system that has yet to be visited by a probe from Earth, which New Horizons will remedy, though by that time, we might have more planets to visit. Scientists and astronomers have recently identified a Kuiper Belt object that is even larger than Pluto, once again opening the debate as to whether Pluto is even a planet, or just an anomalously large Kuiper Belt object itself. As Sobel's book points out, there are a lot of arguments both for and against calling these objects planets, but Pluto seems to be firmly ensconced as a planet if for no other reason than sentimentality.

Pluto was really discovered by accident. Herschel had discovered Uranus in the mid-1800's, but there was difficulty in accurately determining its orbit, which scientists attributed to another large body farther out that was perturbing Uranus's orbit. Through sheer force of calculation and the elegance of mathematics, the location of Neptune was calculated and then observed. An excellent account of the discovery of Neptune is given in "The Neptune File". However, even after Neptune's discovery, anomalies in the orbits remained, which sent astronomers hunting for another planet in much the same way as Neptune.

Pluto was eventually discovered in 1930, but when it was, it quickly became obvious that it was not massive enough to have caused the observed anomalies in Uranus and Neptune's orbits. It wasn't until the Voyager probes in the mid-1980's that the mystery was solved: The effect of both Uranus and Neptune's gravity on the probes allowed an accurate determination of their mass that Herschel and others had lacked. Pluto has no discernible effect on their orbits. The fact that it was being searched for at all was based on an erroneous data. But once the moniker of planet is given, inertia takes over, and ratcheting back to an 8-planet solar system seems like a step backward. It will be interesting to see what the discussion on this latest object yields - will we be adding a 10th planet to the pantheon? Time will tell...

On a personal note, the reactor in lab had first plasma last week. It only took two and a half goddamn years.

Is that a Mars Rover or a Lens Aberration?

2006-01-05T15:37:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I am a bit of a NASA geek. Always have been, always will be, probably. I was the geek in college who loved the fact that the university cable system had the NASA channel. I would leave it on sometimes, especially when there was a mission going on, and they would just be broadcasting live downlinks from the Shuttle, MIR, or later, ISS. I would always know when a launch or landing would be occurring and try to catch it live or on the webcast. I liked watching the people at Mission Control. Sure the astronauts were sexy and glamorous (this really is true, now that I have met and worked with some of them), but the folks in Mission Control were the geeks like me. That was why it was always so gut-wrenching to watch them after an accident, especially one involving a crewed vehicle. The people who fly are gutsy and brave, no doubt, but the folks behind the scenes that make it all work and work perfectly (or else people die) are the ones I really have respect for. Talk about having to take your job seriously...

One of the multitude of books I am reading right now is one called Roving Mars, written by Steve Squyres. Steve is a professor at Cornell and the lead scientist on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that have been on Mars now for over two years. That's right, the little rovers that could, the little rovers that were only designed to last 90 days are now pushing over 700 days on Mars and over 7 miles driven. I remember distinctly staying up on January 3rd two years ago, well past midnight, watching the landing team wait for Spirit to touch down at Gusev. It was an important moment, as the last two missions that NASA and JPL had sent to Mars had failed and failed rather embarrassingly. It still gives me chills to watch that landing, even though no one's life was even at stake. There is something inherently beautiful and romantic about space exploration. Discovery for discovery's sake. Because it is there. To paraphrase Kennedy, we don't do it because it is easy, we do it because it is hard. The risks are big (like shooting three-quarters of a billion dollars worth of hardware at the Martian atmosphere at 12,000 MPH and basically doing a controlled crash-landing with airbags in six minutes time), but the rewards are worth it if you pull it off. How many people can say that they landed a mission on Mars and got amazing science out of it? Precious few...

Two years later, and they are still going. Spirit even climbed a mountain, and the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft imaged it while it was at it's highest point. You see it, right? ;-)

Nostalgia

2005-12-21T13:52:00.000-05:00

Home for the holidays early this year, taking advantage of the freedom and flexibility that a professorial job offers. Hey, seeing as it looks like this will be the last holiday season/winter break that I spend in academics, I might as well live it up.

Living it up today consisted of cleaning out my grandfather's car. When my grandfather passed away last August, I was home to help Mom with a lot of nuts and bolts of dealing with the estate. Since the car was considered an asset, it couldn't be sold until the will was probated and the estate was settled, which just happened about a month ago. So, back in August I drove the car down from the assisted living facility where my grandfather had lived and put it into my Mom's garage.

In his declining health and with his poor eyesight, Pop-pop didn't do such a good job keeping the interior of his car that clean. There were a lot of crumbs, water bottles, garbage, wrappers, old paperwork, tools, and a fine layer of grime over everything. Mom just hasn't had the willpower, physically or emotionally, to go deal with it sitting there in the garage, but it needed to be cleaned up so that it can now be sold.

Well, I guess I should have asked about it a little more often, because I don't think Mom has even started it in six months, so I'm pretty sure that every fluid in the car settled into a viscous pool of goo at the bottom of whatever holding tank it was in. The battery appeared to be fine, though, as all the dashboard lights came on, but the car literally sounded like someone had taken a box full of metal parts, dumped them where the engine should be, and then started mixing them vigorously. FYI, this is a 1996 Chevrolet Caprice Classic. Like the state troopers used to drive.

Anyway, after about 10 minutes of coaxing, and giving it a little gas, the engine finally turned over and sputtered to life. It was touch and go there for a little while, and there was virtually no oil pressure when it first got going, but everything did even out and settle into a reasonably smooth idle after about 20 minutes. I let it run for over an hour while I set to work on cleaning the interior with spray cleaner, windex, and the vacuum. Pop-pop had apparently spilled some soda at some point, because there was a lot of brown sticky goo over a lot of the dashboard. I found papers from years ago, old prescriptions, a doctor's appointment card for mid-September 2005 (he passed away August 12th), old tapes, glasses, and, most poignantly, a shopping list in his handwriting. I can see why Mom was not anxious to jump in and do this.

The one thing that wouldn't go away, however, was the 'Check Engine' light. My guess is that it probably has something to do with the emissions system and having sat unused so long, because operationally, everything seemed fine. The registration and inspection have both expired, so I didn't want to take it out on the road, but after I got it cleaned up, I popped in one of Pop-pop's Dean Martin tapes and drove the old boat around the block a couple of times, and everything seemed fine. It's back in the garage now, but I will probably see if Mom wants me to take it to the dealer and get it inspected and the 'Check Engine' light figured out, so she can finally sell it and reclaim half of her garage, which is where the patio furniture usually goes.

It is strange having him gone. This is the first time that it's really hit me, since it is the first time that I've been home again since his funeral. I would always go and see him and have lunch with him when I came home to visit, which is now obviously missing. Somehow I think it's easier to lose one's grandparents at an earlier age. The younger you are, the less you understand or comprehend death and dying. I lost my grandmother at 16, my great aunt at 22, and now my grandfather at 29, and I've felt each loss more acutely, which I attribute to having a progressively more adult relationship with each of them in turn. I realize, only too late, how little I really knew about them as people, outside their roles as my family members. It really serves as a reminder to me that life is fleeting, we only go around once, and so appreciate the time you have with people and don't forget to live and enjoy life.

Perhaps the last blog before the holidays. If so, may everyone have a warm and safe holiday spent in the presence of family and friends.

ENFJ

2005-12-14T21:55:00.000-05:00

That is apparently my personality type, according to Myers-Briggs. For those not in the know, that is Extroverted-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging. I find this interesting, since according to my career counselor this is atypical for both college professors as well as engineers. Most college professors tend to be I, or introverted. This is often attributed to the fact that while academia can be and often is collaborative and collegial, the motivation for research or scholarship tends to come from within. Many engineers also tend to be more S (sensing) rather than N (intuitive) and more T (Thinking) rather than F (Feeling).

So this gives me insight as to why I might not be the happiest person in my job, since I am both an engineer and a college professor.

The other possibility is that the test is just wrong, or I answered it with bias towards a particular view.

However, from the ENFJ personality description:

"For ENFJs, relationships are everything. Because it is so important for them that other people like them, they are outgoing, friendly, and genuinely concerned about the welfare of others. They tend to be rather idealistic and use their personal values to rule their lives. They are caring, warm, and enthusiastic people, with great energy for projects or causes that they believe in."

"Because it is so important to ENFJs that they are liked, they often talk around issues or are less than direct and honest in an attempt to avoid conflict. Hence, they sometimes sacrifice their own needs and make choices that are not in their best interests in order to please others. They may choose not to see the facts that contradict their idealistic view of other people and end up disappointed or hurt."

"ENJFs are so eager to have things decided and projects finished, they sometimes rush through the information collecting stage and make hasty or flawed decisions. Wanting to always appear capable, organized, and in control, they may hesitate from asking for help or admitting they need to start over."

While it isn't perfect, I definitely see a lot of this in myself. ENFJ's are future-oriented, and have difficulty living in and enjoying the present. I know that this is definitely true for me - I am often saying to myself "If I can only get to X holiday, or Y break, I will be OK." Then of course, these dates come and go, and I am left looking forward to something else, but never really happy.

It was an interesting two-hour session with the counselor this afternoon, and I feel like I am learning something about myself. The only problem is that I *am* eager to have things decided and projects finished. I like to feel like I am making consistent progress, that I am working towards something, rather than simply existing, which is how I've felt for the last year or so. The problem here is that the path of self-discovery is rarely linear. I know instinctively that five years from now my life will be OK (it better be!) - I can take the coarse-grained view and know that writ large, everything will work out as it is supposed to. What I am decidedly having trouble with these days is the fine-grained view - the trees rather than the forest. I've forgotten how to live life on a day-to-day basis, which really, is all we have when it comes down to it.

I feel that slowly but surely I am waking up from some deep sleep, that I am rediscovering who I really am. The scary part is that I don't know how or why I forgot who I was (or thought I was) in the first place. I have been pounding this round peg into this square hole for years now, and somehow am just coming to realize that it just doesn't work.

It's liberating and terrifying at the same time.

Glass Lab

2005-12-12T22:08:00.000-05:00

The MIT Glass Lab holds a number of events throughout the year, including the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch. I have gone a few times in recent years, because some of the creations are quite unique and quite beautiful, as you can see in the photo to the left (photo courtesy of the Glass Lab). The pumpkins make great gifts, and they also make great holiday decorations during the autumn. I picked up two pumpkins at this year's sale for the house. Very unfortunately, the success of these sales seems to have gone to their heads. When I first went a few years ago, it was a relatively small affair, and a nice size pumpkin (about 4-6 inches in diameter) could be had for $35-$50. This year my sister and I went, and it was an absolute mob scene, as the event has become well publicized around Boston and Cambridge. Additionally, the pumpkins themselves have skyrocketed in price, with many of the the same 4-6 inch pumpkins selling for well over $100 a piece. I literally watched people horde and fight over these things, as well as spend thousands of dollars. It is somewhat unfortunate.

They also have a few other sales during the year - The holiday one is going on right now (today and Tuesday 12/13/2005, 10 AM -5 PM, Lobby 10), and there is typically another one around Mother's Day. The holiday one is always a good place to pick up some Christmas presents, but it is also falling prey to the inflated prices that the Pumpkin Patch has seen in the last few years. In any case, I picked up what I consider to be a rather beautiful vase that I intend as Christmas present for my Mom at a reasonable $60, seeing as many comparable items were $200 or more. If you're in the area tomorrow, I recommend dropping in and checking it out. They have some really beautiful hand-blown ornaments for sale, all around $20.

When it all comes apart...

2005-11-28T21:30:00.000-05:00

What do you do when you feel like you don't know how to live your life anymore?

What do you do when you think that you have made consistently bad decisions for as far back as you can now remember?

What do you do when you feel like you've spent 10 years educating yourself in a field you have no interest in?

What do you do when you feel like you have let everyone around you down?

What do you do when you love two people for completely different reasons in very different ways?

What do you do when people think that what you feel is an aberration or not 'real', and can be fixed by repeatedly explaining why you are wrong?

What do you do when you can't stop feeling these things?

What do you do?

Because I really have no idea.

I don't know how I have arrived here, and I don't really know the way out.

I didn't set out to hurt or cause pain to anyone, even though I know that I have. I have no excuses, no defenses, no explanations. Sometimes things just happen, and we can't fully explain why they do. Sometimes they happen so gradually and slowly over time that you never consciously have the thought that they could be stopped, even if you had wanted to.

Sometimes things just are.

Action...

2005-11-09T12:34:00.000-05:00

Things are coming to a head at work - focusing, in a sense. It is becoming increasingly clear that the department that I am in is a sinking ship, and that the time to move is fast approaching. My goal is to find another job before I would have to re-sign my contract next April/May.

Thus, I have started to take some proactive steps to make that happen. At the recent conference in Worst Conference City in the World, I spent quite a bit of time discussing my professional career with my former advisor. We were talking about the department that I graduated from at Huge Research University, and how they have basically doubled the undergraduate enrollment in the last 5 years, and are desperately strapped for people to teach classes. Add to this that their undergraduate education coordinator, a wonderful man who really cared about undergraduate education (a rarity at HRU), recently passed away. My advisor actively encouraged me to talk to the department head at HRU and see if I could come back to HRU full time as the new undergraduate education coordinator. While this wouldn't be tenure-track, I would get to do two of the things that I like most about my current job - teaching undergraduates and academic policy and administration. Plus, I would be back at HRU, which was one of the most stimulating academic environments I have ever been in. So, definitely something to consider, and I intend to contact the department head no later than this week.

My advisor (who really has been an incredible mentor) also passed along an email from a colleague at Giant Semiconductor Company, and they are looking to hire someone with experience pretty much in what I did my thesis work on, so I have a lot of the requisite skills. I sent them my CV, and got a response today, saying they would pass it on to the right people. So we'll see about that. (Though taking that job would require moving out of New England).

Lastly, I made an appointment with a Career Counselor. I figure that I need some help figuring out what I really want to do, professionally. I don't want to just jump out of one job and into another that I also end up not liking. This may end up being a complete waste of time and money, but if it has any benefits at all, I will consider it money well spent. I guess my problem is that I was so focused on being a college professor since about mid-college that I never really considered any other career options. I went right from undergrad to grad school to professor-hood. I haven't been off a college campus in 11 years, and I have no idea how to go about doing a real job search for someone with my background.

So, we'll see what happens. I just hope that I don't take all of these tests and they come back and tell me "You are ideally suited for a career in higher education or academia". That would be funny, in a very cruel sort of way...

"Beautiful World"

2005-11-08T15:35:00.000-05:00

Beautiful World
(Lyrics & Music: Colin Hay)

My, my, my it’s a beautiful world
I like swimming in the sea
I like to go out beyond the white breakers
Where a man can still be free (or a woman if you are one)
I like swimming in the sea.

My, my, my it’s a beautiful world
I like drinking Irish tea
With a little bit of lapsang souchong
I like making my own tea.

My my my it’s a beautiful world
I like driving in my car
Roll the top down sometimes I travel quite far
Drive to the ocean stare up at the stars
I like driving in my car

All around is anger, automatic guns
It’s death in large numbers no respect for women or our little ones
I tried talking to Jesus but He just put me on hold
Said He’d been swamped by calls this week
And He couldn’t shake His cold

And still this emptiness persists
Perhaps this is as good as it gets
When you’ve given up the drink and those nasty cigarettes
Now I leave the party early at least with no regrets
I watch the sun as it comes up I watch it as it sets
Yeah this is as good as it gets.

My, my, my it’s a beautiful world
I like sleeping with Marie
She is one sexy girl full of mystery
She says she doesn’t love me but she likes my company
For now that’s good enough for me

My, my, my it’s a beautiful world
I like swimming in the sea
I like to go out beyond the white breakers
Where a man can still be free (or a woman if you are one)
I like swimming in the sea.

Listen to it here (from iTunes)

"Have It All"

2005-11-06T21:34:00.000-05:00

I heard a song this weekend that literally changed my life. Ever have one of those songs that just speaks to your soul, and that you listen to on repeat for hours? That was this song. A very dear friend gave me a copy of a CD, and this track is near the end. It's called "Have it All", by Jeremy Kay.

Some days I feel like crying
It don't matter if it's rain or shine
I feel like my heart was broken
At least a million times

Some days I wake up dreaming
Feels like I've never even woke
I answer life's big questions
As if it's one big joke

Maybe it's too soon to be sure
But I really do believe that someday
We're gonna have it all
So I try so hard to keep the rhythm of a train
Rolling right along
When the ride gets rough you got to carry on
Carry on...

Some days I feel like singing
I sit back and just groove the day away
Maybe pick up a guitar
And play what I want to play

Maybe it's too soon to be sure
But I really do believe that someday
We're gonna have it all
So I try so hard to keep the rhythm of a train
Rolling right along
When the ride gets rough you got to carry on
Carry on...

Today I feel like laughing
Seems to be no reason at all
And if the world stops spinning
I'm not afraid to fall

Maybe it's too soon to be sure
But I really do believe that someday
We're gonna have it all
So I try so hard to keep the rhythm of a train
Rolling right along
When the ride gets rough you got to carry on

Maybe it's too soon to be sure
But I really do believe that someday
We're gonna have it all
So I try so hard to keep the rhythm of a train
Rolling right along
When the ride gets rough you got to carry on
Carry on...

The lyrics here really don't do it justice - there is something about the mournful yet hopeful tone in Kay's voice that just strikes a chord in me. I'd provide a link to the iTunes music store, but they don't have this particular track. If anyone is interested, this track, along with a bunch of other kick-ass tunes, is available on the Scrubs soundtrack.

Courtesy of RH

2005-10-20T23:13:00.000-04:00

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Thank god for this...I shouldn't be teaching engineering if I can't pass 8th grade math...

In a Past Life...

You Were: A Redhead Priest.

Where You Lived: Ireland.

How You Died: Natural causes.

Who Were You In a Past Life?

Natural Causes ain't a bad way to go...

You Should Get a PhD in Science (like chemistry, math, or engineering)

You're both smart and innovative when it comes to ideas.
Maybe you'll find a cure for cancer - or develop the latest underground drug.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

Done and done...

You are Agonistic

You're not sure if God exists, and you don't care.
For you, there's no true way to figure out the divine.
You rather focus on what you can control - your own life.
And you tend to resent when others "sell" religion to you.

What's Your Religious Philosophy?

Hmmm...I do believe in God, I think...just not the "Angry God"...

Your Hair Should Be White

Classy, stylish, and eloquent.
You've got a way about you that floors everyone you meet.

What's Your Funky Inner Hair Color?

White, huh? Well, it may be grey soon enough.

How You Are In Love

You take a while to fall in love with someone. Trust takes time.

In relationships, you tend to be a bit selfish.

You tend to get very attached when you're with someone. You want to see your love all the time.

You love your partner unconditionally and don't try to make them change.

You stay in love for a long time, even if you aren't loved back. When you fall, you fall hard.

How Are You In Love?

Sounds about right...

Thanks to RH

Home Improvement Success

2005-10-15T14:50:00.000-04:00

I successfully added value to my home today, and it felt good.

The undergraduate students in my program are raising money to go to the big national conference in our field, which is happening in about two weeks in The Most Boring Possible Conference City Ever. In any case, in order to raise money, the students who wanted to go decided to basically rent themselves out as a group to do odd jobs for anyone who would hire them.

I thought that this was a great idea, and initially thought that I would have them come over and we could do a whole bunch of outdoor yard work - leaves, pruning, weeding, etc...basically getting the exterior of the place ready for the winter. Great plan, except for the part where it frakking rains in New England for eight straight days.

So I needed to come up with some indoor activities for them to do. This really wasn't about getting too much work out of them, but rather supporting their efforts to go to the conference. These are mostly students that I've had in class and enjoyed interacting with a great deal.

So, we decided to have them repaint a piece of furniture that we had, clean the windows in our sun room, and scrub our dining room furniture down.

So, I got up this morning and went to Home Depot to buy some supplies for the gang coming over, and of course I never can get in and out of Home Depot cleanly. This time I ended up ogling those nifty EnergyStar compliant programmable thermostats - you know, the ones that claim to save you 33% on your heating bills if you use them properly. With the combination of very old windows, an ancient heating system, and skyrocketing fuel costs, I thought that one of these might not be a bad idea.

I selected a Honeywell 5-1-1 type, meaning that you can select different programs for Monday-Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I went with Honeywell basically because every thermostat that I've seen in New England pretty much is the old-school round Honeywell-type, as depicted here.

Now, I have had several friends install these in their own homes or apartments, and the instructions on the package make this seem like something one can do one oneself. I mean, seriously, the instructions on the front of the package literally say: 1.) Remove Old Thermostat. 2.) Mount Wallplate and Connect New Wires. 3.) Install New Thermostat and Set Program. I have a frakking Ph.D. in engineering, so one would think I could follow those instructions.

Anyway, the instructions inside the package are a bit more detailed, and assume that you have a nice, old, round Honeywell thermostat which you are disconnecting. They give you helpful diagrams about wire placement, and how to disconnect the old wires and map them to the new.

This is where the fun begins.

As with any project involving electrical circuits, you should turn off power to item before you start hacking at it. So, I go downstairs to look at the cicuit breaker box, and of course, ours is completely unlabeled. No idea what circuit the boiler is on. So, I go upstairs, crank the heat until the boiler kicks on, and then run back to the panel and start flipping circuits until the thing kicks off. Easy enough - circuit found.

Now, I go to remove the old thermostat from the wall. This proves to be easier said than done, since the old faceplate has been alternately painted, wallpapered, and repainted to the wall over the course of the eons that it has apparently been in place. Apparently Honeywell was the first company in existence, and this thermostat was their first product.

This step doesn't go particularly well, as in the act of trying to remove the old thermostat from the wall, it breaks. So we better damn well hope that the new one works, because the old one ain't going back into place.

So, I look at the old mounting plate, the one that the oh-so-helpful instructions say will tell me what is wired to what, so that I can intelligently migrate the wires from old to new. Except that my old mounting plate is a blank piece of plastic. There are exactly two (ancient, cloth-covered) wires, one black and one white, attached to this non-descript piece of plastic.

I'm starting to sweat a little here, but I avoid cursing, as I do have a houseful of my students around, remember. Luckily, one of them is an electrical engineer, and I press him into service to help me figure out what the hell I am going to do now.

The new thermostat has no fewer than 8 or 10 terminals to which wires can be connected, so I figure that randomly connecting the two that I have will not be a viable solution.

At this point, I figure I need help, so we call our oil guy, a saint of a man who has been very gracious in answering our questions about the ancient heating system in the house. I get on the phone with him, and he tells me to connect one wire to the terminal marked "R" and one to the terminal marked "W", and that should do it. I ask him "Does it matter which goes where?" He replies, "Nope."

This is why home wiring bugs me. Everyone seems pretty nonchalant about it, yet it seems pretty important. If I have a chemical plant, and I start flowing things the wrong way, bad things can happen, but apparently, in my home thermostat with only two wires, it doesn't matter which one goes where. OK.

So my electrical engineering cohort strips back the wires and inserts them into the terminals, securing them. We mount the plate onto the wall, install the batteries into the fancy digital faceplate, and snap it back into place. I run downstairs and flip the breaker back on, and come back upstairs. The panel is now live.

Moment of truth. The thermostat reads 74 F. I push the 'up' button until the system is set at 75 F. The boiler clicks on. Success!

So, all it took was one Ph.D. engineer, an undergrad EE major, and one call to the local oil company guy, and we got our fanccy new digital programmable thermostat working. Let the energy saving commence...

Pale Blue Dot...

2005-10-13T22:25:00.000-04:00

If I had been an engineer in the 50's, 60's or 70's, I totally would have worked for NASA.

This is a picture of Earth as taken from the surface of Mars, as taken by the Mars Rover Spirit. It is the first time that a picture of the homeworld has been taken from the surface of another world since Gene Cernan and Jack Schmidt did so on Apollo 17. (This photo is from the Mars Rovers site.)

Another cool site is Blue Marble, a NASA site that is dedicated to providing high resolution photos of the Earth's surface. They continuously photograph the whole world over the course of many months, and then stitch together all the photos, making sure that each sector they use is cloud-free. The result is some stunning whole-earth photos with no clouds to spoil the view.

For some fantastic restored photos from the entire Apollo program, check out The Apollo Image Gallery.

Try the Astronomy Picture of the Day for a daily picture from NASA's collection, including many stunning images from Hubble.

I like using various ones for desktop pictures. Enjoy!

Graduate Students and Other Annoyances...

2005-10-13T13:25:00.000-04:00

It would seem that La Lecturess isn't the only one with students who are trying to pull fast ones on her...

I have two graduate students that I supervise that, to put it politely, are disasters. My university has been working hard to try and improve the quality of graduate students in general, but coming from a much bigger university with a much more well-established graduate program has really put this problem into stark relief: without good graduate students, advisors in the sciences and engineering get very little accomplished.

I never remember myself being this *lazy* when I was a grad student! If my advisor asked for something, I damn well better have had it done by the next time that I saw her, if I knew what was good for me. My students have this "whatever" attitude that just flabbergasts me. I have tried both the carrot and the stick here. I have tried to be really enthusiastic about stuff and get them into building the lab up and telling them what a great job they are doing. I have tried to be stern with them and tell them, "Hey, this is your first priority for the next few years, so get with it!" Nothing seems to work.

Case in point: we started a journal club in group meeting to try and keep everyone on top of literature in the field. This was at *their* request. I took the first week, because I wanted to show them how it was done, and what my expectations for discussion and analysis were like. It didn't go particularly well, mostly because they hadn't read the article, even though I had sent it out days ahead of time.

The analysis I wanted to focus on centered on two elementary polymerization reactions. Based on the spectroscopic data that was presented, I wanted them to tell me the mechanism of polymerization. Undergrads with an organic chemistry course under their belts should have been able to tell me how to start the analysis, but these two, who are graduate students, had no idea. So, I carefully led them through the first reaction, with much teeth-pulling, but told them that for the second reaction, they were on their own, and I wanted to see them have it for me next week.

Well, of course, that was yesterday, and of course, they didn't have the analysis done. Nor did they choose another article for discussion, saying they had 'forgotten'. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy, and it was a short group meeting.

I can't wait to either A.) Graduate this group or B.) Get a new job myself, whichever comes sooner.

In other news, the house is being cranky again right now. There is piece of flashing on the roof that has blown loose with all the wind and rain this past week, and it is flopping lazily against the gutter in the front of the house. This means that I will either need to rent or find an extension ladder this weekend, buy some galvanized roofing nails, and nail the damn thing back down. Don't get me started about our antiquated heating system that likes to put steam wherever it feels like. At least it works, I guess.

At least tomorrow is Friday, and there are already plans afoot with G-Fav and J-Fav. It will be good to see G - it feels like too long since we hung out.

Weekend Update

2005-10-09T22:26:00.000-04:00

Sunday evening in a very damp and cold New England. Today was a day of rest and recovery, following what I must say is one of the most fun afternoons and evenings that I've had in months.

The dinner party was a success - the table looked great, the food all turned out well, and the most important part - the guests (The Potters, J-Fav, RH, and the Fergusbergs) - were their normal fantastic selves.

I had spent the previous couple of days doing some advance prep work for the meal (see my previous chicken post), but I have to say that a large part of the success of the cooking goes out to my kick-ass sous-chef, RH. She made a blueberry pie for dessert, and basically helped me out with a second set of hands all day. It also probably didn't hurt that we cracked open the wine at around 3 PM to smooth out the rough edges. ;-) If we ever do start that commune that so many of us talk about, I will more than happily share the cooking duties with G-Fav and Jed.

So, the wine flowed and the food was consumed - we raised a glass to absent friends (G-Fav and La Lecturess, we were thinking of you.) We generally cursed MH, who failed to attend b/c he was busy rooting for his beloved NYY. :-P

After dinner, the party proceeded to game-playing. Taboo was the order of the evening, which got progressively more humorous the more the wine flowed. The rest of Team 2 generally compensated for my increasing inability to not say the word printed on the cards. After Taboo, believe it or not, the dancing commenced in the living room courtesy of D.J. iPod.

When all was said and done, no china or glasses were broken, no red wine was spilled (amazing considering what a clutz I am), and it was going on 2AM, far later than I have been up for a party in a while. It was nice not to feel old.

In any case, I had a terrific time, and look forward to the next gathering of friends, whenever that may be.

How much chicken can one woman eat?

2005-10-05T22:46:00.000-04:00

So, there is going to be a dinner party at the house this weekend. An old college friend of Mrs. Nutty Professor will be in town with her husband for the weekend, and so we are having a small gathering at the house Saturday evening.

Now, I very much enjoy entertaining. Our circle of friends has become quite good at this, and it has been extremely nice in the last few months to make the rounds and catch up with people and have fantastic meals.

So, this weekend it is our turn. I'm a little disappointed that some of the usual suspects (G-Fav, Lecturess) won't be in attendance, but it will still be fun, especially because I get to cook, which I generally enjoy.

Which brings me to the story...

I was out at the grocery store this evening, securing provisions for the dinner. Now, the main course that I am planning is a stuffed chicken dish. If you do this the old fashioned way, you buy boneless chicken breasts, butterfly them with a sharp knife, and then pound them flat with a kitchen mallet. (I guess if you do it the *really* old fashioned way, you start with a live chicken and go from there).

If you are a little lazier, Perdue sells these great chicken breasts that are essentially fillets - nice and thin and flat - perfect for what this recipe calls for. So, I go to grocery store #1 -- no luck, just regular chicken breasts. Hopeful, I move on to store #2 in search of these breasts. No dice. I bite the bullet and buy the regular chicken breasts and resign myself to an evening of butterfly-ing and mallet-ing.

As I am checking out, I notice a woman in another checkout line. Her cart is full of these special chicken breasts. I am not talking 5 or 10, I mean that she has upward of 25 packages of these chicken breasts in her cart. Now, I understand that they were on sale, but my god, this lady bought the entire stock. Incredulous, I think I muttered something along the lines of "son of a bitch", which she evidently heard. At this point I felt very bad because she asked me if I wanted to take some of the chicken.

Sheepishly, I smiled and said no thanks, paid for my groceries and went home. I mean, really, was I going to root through this lady's cart to pick out some chicken?

Anyway, that's my story for the evening. I came home and did a fair bit of prep work for the dinner Saturday, and plan to do some more tomorrow so that Saturday I can pop open a bottle of wine and cook in peace.

Crossroads

2005-10-03T16:22:00.000-04:00

So, today was an interesting day at work. Things here have been slowly gaining momentum -- towards what I'm not always sure, but it often feels like we are on the brink of total chaos, and then somehow we are snapped back to some semblance of 'normal'.

I had an hour long conversation with a friend and colleague of mine, and the discussion basically centered on the fact that he is no longer happy here at the university, that he has several intriguing offers from elsewhere, and that he, for the first time, is seriously contemplating those offers and getting the hell out of Dodge.

Now, those of you that know me also know that I have not been the happiest fellow at my job for about a year now. I find that being a university professor isn't really what I thought it would be. I had visions of teaching and collegiality and the back-and-forth give-and-take of ideas. Basically, I thought being junior faculty would be like graduate school with some more responsibilities and a better paycheck.

I've been very wrong about that assumption, and have come to find that my real love (teaching and pedagogy) is seriously undervalued in the sciences and engineering, and what is important is grantsmanship and the ability to secure funding. This is, quite possibly, the aspect of the job that I like the least. Coupled with the fact that our department always seems like it is on the verge of collapse, that nothing meaningful ever gets done, and we have no real leadership, you might begin to understand why I don't like about 75-85% of my job.

But, I have persevered. I keep telling myself that it will get better, that all junior faculty feel like this, and that I just need to tough it out until I get my one lucky break and get a project funded.

Unfortunately, I increasingly feel like I am pounding a square peg into a round hole. This job just doesn't seem to 'fit'. My biggest dilemma is that I have absolutely no frakking clue as to what I would do instead. I have been so focused on being faculty since my undergraduate days that I really have never thought of other possibilities outside of academia. I have never been in the traditional job market, and I have no idea where one goes to find a Ph.D. level job outside of academia.

All of this fell into stark relief today as I talked with my colleague. He is very senior and very well respected in the field. Basically, he is the glue that is holding the department together through sheer force of personality and will. If he leaves, even for a one-year sabbatical, there will be enormous holes in basically everything that no one here has the experience to fill. (This is the problem with having a faculty that is almost 66% untenured). I fear that the department, bereft of the one semblance of leadership that it has, will simply descend into total ineffectiveness.

And so I ask myself, is it time to seriously consider a career change?

Confused...

2005-10-02T18:33:00.000-04:00

So if you have a minute why don't we go,
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything.
So why don't we go somewhere only we know,
Somewhere only we know.

Poetry

2005-10-01T10:29:00.000-04:00

I have
nothing to say
and I am
saying it
and that is
poetry

--John Cage

Yo, G - I'm not that sad...

2005-07-13T21:53:00.000-04:00

Hey G-man,

This is so you don't have to look at my last, somewhat sad, self-pitying post.

A joke:

What is Mary short for?

(Wait for it...)

She's got no legs!

Terrible, I know, but hey.

Actually, a lot has happened since my last post, but in reading myself, and comparing myself rather unfavorably to other friend's blogs, I've decided that 1.) I don't want to be a 'whiny' blog and 2.) I don't write well enough, nor can I make the seemingly mundane seem really, really interesting (see La Lecturess for examples of making everything seem cool and avant garde). So, I'll probably be posting a lot less, and only if something truly interesting happens.

Peace.

Feeling Kind of Useless...

2005-06-13T11:11:00.000-04:00

Ever have one of those days where you feel like you can't make a difference? That was my day yesterday.

As some of you may have noted from reading below, R and I will be moving in a few short weeks into our house. This will leave our apartment vacant, and as many of you know, our apartment is an absolute steal in the rental market around here.

My sister also lives around here, and is looking to move out of her current place at the end of the summer. She currently has a very cute but very expensive studio in the downtown area. By moving into our place, she could reduce her rent by more than half what she is paying now, which would be fantastic for her.

So, R and I have been trying to facilitate this move for her by talking with our landlady. The main stumbling block? One 90-pound labrador retriever. Our landlady has a rather shoddy no-pets policy (I say shoddy because both she and our downstairs neighbor have had pets in our time there). She mainly seems to have a problem with dogs, but was willing to meet my sister and the dog to see if she could be swayed.

Suffice it to say that I don't think she was swayed. She said she would 'think about it' but that if my sister found something else in the meantime that she should take it. Hence my frustration - here we have a perfectly good win-win situation. My sister needs a cheaper place to live, and my landlady needs a new responsible tenant. You'd think we wouldn't have a problem here, but try as I might, I have absolutely no sway over the situation, and I feel bad about it.

Situation #2 involves my grandfather. He has taken a rather large turn for the worse, or a least a turn for the dramatic. He has been calling my poor mother at all hours, claiming this emergency or that emergency, which sends Mom off to his apartment to deal with whatever the crisis of the day is. From her description of events, it seems like he is angling for company more than anything, since half an hour after she arrives he is happily chattering away. He seems to have given up on taking care of himself though, and isn't cooking for himself/eating anymore, isn't shopping or doing laundry, and some days isn't even getting dressed. He is expecting Mom to come after/during work and do his cooking/cleaning/laundry, etc.

This is a bad situation for Mom, since she is working full time, and pulling extra duty on weekends in addition to basically playing full-time caregiver to my grandfather. I can hear how frustrated and tired she is, but again, their really isn't anything I can do about it short of moving back home. My sister and I went home Memorial day weekend to try and help out short term, and I think Mom was grateful, but it was simply a short-term band-aid for a weekend. So, that is the second situation that I wish I could help with more, but can't.

Blech

2005-06-07T20:22:00.000-04:00

I routinely complain that the weekends are not long enough.

This weekend was fun. R had to work on Sunday, so I decided that, given the nice weather, I was going to head over to Fenway park and try and buy day-of-game tickets for the Sox-Angels game on Sunday. Tickets go on sale 2 hours before game time, which meant noon on this particular day.

So, knowing the insanity that is Red Sox nation, I showed up at 8:30 AM, book in hand to pass the time. I ended up being 3rd in line, and learned that you really don't need to show up until about 10 AM unless it is a Yankee game.

I never did read any of the book, as I ended up talking to the two people ahead of me in line. Number 1 was a guy named Mike, who was a Yankee fan, but needed to see if he was really a closeted Red Sox fan. He got in his car at 7:30 PM Saturday evening in, get this, Halifax (yes, Nova Scotia), and drove 900 miles to come see this game. Number 2 in line was a girl named Tricia, who was from Quincy, and had stood in line for tickets the day before as well.

So, my sister meets me in line about 11 AM, and the ticket office opens at noon. Right before the box office opens, a Red Sox employee comes out and tells us that all they have for today's game is standing room only.

Now, this was disappointing, because the whole point of standing out for day-of-game tickets is that you can often get some good seats; seats that are player's family tix they aren't using, unused VIP seats, etc. But, having stood outside for a couple of hours, I wasn't about to just walk away.

So, we bought the SRO tix and went inside. We found a very nice spot along the first base line, and enjoyed the first 6 innings of the game there. Meanwhile, Mike (guy #1 in line) had gone to someone in management and told them his big story about driving all the way from Halifax, and 'somehow' they found some field box seats for him. Now, to show you what a stand-up guy Mike is, and how you can bond with people in a short amount of time while waiting in lines, in the top of the 7th, a bunch of people in Mike's row with small children decided to leave. Mike came and found me and my sister and told us, and we spent the last 3rd of the game enjoying the view from the $80 seats. Cool. Plus, we win, 6-3. Double cool.

Now, for the not-so-cool ending to the weekend.

I wake up at 2 in the morning feeling sick to my stomach, and end up spending the next two hours in the bathroom being violently and quite disgustingly ill. Around 4:30 in the morning, I am so sick that when I stand up, I almost pass out. I can tell that I am dehydrated, and that there is no way I am replacing fluids as fast as I am, umm...getting rid of them. So, R pours me in the car, and we go to the hospital, where my blood pressure is a startling low 90-something over 40-something. 2 liters of IV fluids later and battery of blood tests that reveal nothing, and I'm sent home with some anti-nausea meds. I'm happy to say that it appears to have been a 24-hour thing, but what a lousy 24-hours.

I like Mondays off as much as the next person, but I can definitely think of better ways to accomplish it than that.

Bad Afghan Food...

2005-06-03T23:35:00.000-04:00

Hung out with G+J+E tonight. We had emailed back and forth throughout the day, figuring out a plan for dinner tonight. Since R and I will be moving soon (see house discussion below) we decided that it was a good time to check out some of the local restaurants in our neighborhood that we have been talking about for a while (years, in some cases).

So there is this Afghani place up the street from us that is about a year old, and it has an interesting name: "Buzkashi". Buzkashi is apparently a game in Afghanistan, and is loosely translated as 'goat pulling'. Already sounds like a great name for a restaurant, huh? Apparently Afghanis ride around on horseback attempting to capture a headless goat carcass from each other. Think polo, but messier.

Anyway, we had though this place looked interesting for a while now, and so suggested it to G+J+E. 6:30 was the plan.

Well, G is much more industrious than most of us, and actually took the time to look up some reviews of this place. They were astonishingly bad. One gave it 1/2 a star out of 4, and all commented on the bad service, mediocre food, and general lack of menu descriptions matching the actual food. They also both mentioned carrots that were white, spotted, and desiccated. I don't know about you, but 'desiccated' is generally not a good word in a food review.

So, long story short, we bailed on going to Buzkashi, and instead went to an Italian place down the street where we had a good meal, but felt oddly formal in doing so. Maybe it was because of the nice tablecloths, because it wasn't due to our waiter, Mugsy.

After dinner we returned to our place and broke out a game of Clue: Master Detective. For those not in the know, it's the same as regular Clue, but with more suspects, more rooms, and more weapons.

Watching G try to play this game was hilarious. He is seriously the smartest guy I know, but you'd think I was explaining nuclear fusion to a 5 year old when we were trying to explain the rules of this board game to him. G, if you're reading, you know I love you man, but that was funny.

Anyway, that was all for tonight. It was good to see everyone. :-)

A good day...

2005-06-02T19:04:00.000-04:00

Ah, today was a good day in the grand scheme of things.

First, some background. When I was in Graduate School, my Ph.D. work was funded by a Big Semiconductor Company. They were often a pain to work with, both because of cultural differences, and some of the inherent differences and clashes that arise out of industrial-academic partnerships. Industry is often not interested in the 'how' or the 'why' of a process -- they just want a process or recipe that works at the end of the day and that they can make money on. This is especially true in semiconductors, where the entire industry seems to spasm every 18 months with something new.

Anyway, I finished my degree two years ago, and started my academic job. I was glad to be finished with Big Semiconductor Company. Now, as some of you may know, being junior faculty in the sciences or engineering is 'all about the Benjamins'. When I go up for tenure, very few people will care about how good a teacher I was, or how many mind-numbing committees I sat in on. No, the real metric that will be used is how many research dollars did I bring into the university.

Now, to be honest, I have been here going on two years, and I haven't brought in dollar one yet. I could bitch about extenuating circumstances, and the fact that I didn't have a lab until 3 weeks ago, but the fact is, the administration won't care about excuses, they will want results. So, my apparent lack of progress in the grant-securing arena was starting to become increasingly worrisome to me.

Re-enter Big Semiconductor Company. My former advisor calls me up last week, and tells me BSC is interested in continuing some work that I did my thesis on. Thing is, she isn't all that interested in it anymore, so she calls me up, and asks if I want to take the project. Funding! I cannot tell you how incredibly cool this is. My former advisor is one of the greatest people going. She has given me space when I had none, thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and now funding opportunities. If I screw up and don't make tenure, it certainly won't be for her lack of help.

So I went over and met with her and the rep from BSC this morning, and we are going to set it up, and I will end up getting some initial funding that will hopefully bolster my position here and kick-start the career. All thanks to my generous former advisor.

So, that was this morning. Pretty damn good.

This afternoon was better, in a way. I had a ticket to the Sox-Orioles game at Fenway, so after the meeting I hopped on the T and made my way to park just in time for the opening pitches. This was a perfect baseball day in Boston -- sunny, about 70 degrees. The game was a rainout make-up from about a month ago, when it was pouring and about 40 degrees.

It was a good game, but it looked like we were going to drop it, as the birds led 4-3 in the ninth. BUT, the home town team strung together a couple of hits, and David Ortiz, doing what he always does, hit a 3-2 pitch over the wall in center field (with 2 outs, no less) to give Boston the 6-4 walkoff win.

Not a bad ending to the day...

I wonder...

2005-05-25T22:33:00.000-04:00

I wonder what I will be like when I get old...

Well, actually, some days I wonder if I *will* get old.

Where am I going with this? I don't know. I talked to my Mom tonight. She spent the whole day with my grandfather, who will be 83 this summer. He was having cataract surgery today, and Mom was taking him to and from the hospital.

My grandfather still lives on his own, and drives himself around, and is pretty self-sufficient. From what Mom says, though, that may not be the case for much longer. At 83, he is starting to show (some might say he has shown for several years) the signs of someone who needs help with the daily things. I don't think he cooks too much for himself anymore, and his apartment has slowly gotten a little messier as time has gone on.

He is the type of man who has never felt his age, until now, when his body no longer will keep up with the image he has in his head. For years we have tried to get him to be active with senior groups or things of that nature, but he refuses, saying that those people are 'old'.

My Mom broached the subject of assisted living with him today, and he actually was a somewhat responsive to it. I hate to think that it will mean the end of freedom for him, but then also, being around other people more may help him as well.

I wonder what I will be like at 83...

"What a Good Boy"

2005-05-23T22:47:00.000-04:00

I took the subway to and from work today, which I don't often do anymore. R had a late night at work lined up, and I didn't feel like waiting around, and I don't like her to have to take the subway late at night, so I did.

Taking the subway is cool once in a while, if for no other reason than I get to use my iPod a little more often than I do now. When I was in grad school and the first year I worked, I took the subway every day to get where I was going, and that equaled a lot of quality time with the iPod.

After the first year, I realized that the life of an assistant professor is often not synched up well with the train schedule, and so in year two, I started driving to and from work. This makes much more sense now, since R and I work at the same place and can commute together. Anyway, the end result is that we are often in the car together, and I am not using the iPod in the car for the relatively short commute that the car allows. We are usually talking with either NPR or the local sports radio station on.

Anyway, the point is that I forget how much I enjoy the iPod. Today I was using my tiny iPod Shuffle, which basically just plays songs in random order. Since it has no screen, you have no way to know what's coming up next, so it is like a little surprise. I have embraced Apple's marketing on the subject, and have taken to the 'life is random' advertising slogan that they use.

Today, on the walk home from the subway, I ended up listening to "What a Good Boy" from the Barenaked Ladies album "Gordon". I haven't listened to BNL in a while, and never really paid attention to this particular song before, but the lyrics struck me today, and I have been listening to it on repeat for hours now.

"I wake up scared, I wake up strange.
I wake up wondering if anything in my life is ever going to change.
I wake up scared, I wake up strange
and everything around me stays the same."

Yeah, that really sums it up for me today.

On Basketball...

2005-05-10T15:44:00.000-04:00

Played some pick-up basketball with some of the Chemical Engineering undergraduates at lunch today. That's really a pretty big accomplishment, given that I haven't played basketball since maybe the eighth grade. Not that that is so long ago, but I was just never terribly good at it, and so never kept up.

There were supposed to be more faculty there, but of course, there wasn't. I was the only one. That seems to happen a lot around here. For all the talk about building community and such, I find that there is a lot of talk, but very little actual action. Not everything needs to be planned or structured. Meeting up for lunch or playing basketball can be as much community building as anything else.

Maybe I have my priorities wrong, and I should be working more. Actually, I am sure I should be working more, but I really think that the smaller things in life are the things that should be enjoyed. Everyone around me is always running around so busy. Sure, I'm busy, but I don't let it stop me from going to an afternoon baseball game, or playing some basketball with the students. Then I wonder if maybe I'm not busy *enough*, and that if I really knew what I was doing, then I would never have the time to do some of the things that I do.

It's frustrating, because I feel like I could in general really enjoy life if it wasn't for all of the worrying about everything all the time...

"That one's on fire!"

2005-05-09T09:29:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted to this, which really doesn't matter since I'm fairly certain there are maybe three people who read it anyway...

In the intervening time, two significant things have occurred: The semester ended, and R and I may have bought a house. I'll tackle these in order.

The semester ending is always a mixed bag for me, emotionally. I get the greatest reward from my job through teaching and interaction with the students, so the semester ending is always like a sort of sad farewell for me. On the other hand, it frees me from the constant stress of preparing lectures and grading assignments.

This year was particularly difficult, because I had the same group of students in class that I had my first year teaching, so we already knew each other and had a good rapport. They were (are) a terrific group of students, and I am very happy to have had the opportunity to have them in class twice. I went out and had a couple of beers with them after their final (everyone is of age, for those of you who are worried), and probably 2/3 of them all came over to my place for a brunch the weekend after the final - which was a great time. In any case, half of this group will be graduating next year, and I will miss them a great deal. I guess that 'firsts' always stick in your mind, and my first class will definitely stick in mine.

Speaking of other 'firsts', R and I currently have a successful bid in on a house in the suburbs, not too much further from where we live now. We had the home inspection on Saturday...

I really would like to meet the person who thought home inspections were a good idea. I mean, I know, intellectually, that they are an excellent idea and that they serve to identify potentially major problems for the buyer, but from an emotional standpoint, they are absolutely the worst idea possible.

The home inspector's job, it would seem, is to walk through the home and tell you, the potential buyer, who presumably likes the place enough to pony up major dough for it, every possible thing that could ever go wrong with the place. I mean, you read the report (ours is 41 pages, by the way), and you would think that this place should be condemned, not purchased as a place to live.

What's more, is that there really isn't any filter. The inspector doesn't want to get his/her ass sued off, so they tell you everything that is wrong with the place. Some things could potentially fail tomorrow, or 10 years from now. So, it seems like a big crapshoot, guessing what the 'important' items are to address.

In any case, after reading the report thoroughly, we decided a lot of it seemed like the standard boilerplate stuff that could be wrong with any home, and focused in on a couple of major things. So I guess we're moving forward...

Spring Break Week, The Finale...

2005-03-06T21:12:00.000-05:00

OK, well I managed to pull myself together sufficiently such that Spring Break week wasn't a total wash in terms of productivity...I do have all of this week's lectures planned out, and since I find that preparing lectures is what I spend most of my at-work time doing, this coming week should be productive in terms of other things...Maybe...

R is away this weekend at family event, so I have been flying solo. I took her to the airport at 4:30 AM on Saturday so she could catch her flight out. Of all the great things about Boston, the airport and getting to it are not among them. There really is no consistent route to take, due to the massive road construction that is constantly going on. We figured we'd leave by 4:30 to get her to her 5:30 flight. I mean, it can't take any longer than about 15-20 minutes to get to the airport at 4:30 AM on a Saturday, right?

She wasn't checking any bags, and already had her boarding pass printed out, and it's a good thing, b/c we didn't even get to the airport until a few minutes after 5...cutting it close...I find I don't respond well to lateness and missing transportation deadlines, so I publicly apologize if I caused my wife any undue stress in getting her out of town...

One of my new year's resolutions this year was to try and be a calmer, more rational, less volatile person. After 2 months I can safely say that I have failed miserably at that resolution. I am as high-strung and angst-ridden as ever. I really think it is just my personality at this point, b/c even though I want to do better, I always seem to revert to type.

In any case, about the only new year's resolution I managed to keep this year (hey one is better than none) is the one where I decided to get healthier and drop some weight. After 8 weeks, I can happily say that I've dropped 20+ pounds, and I can once again button my jeans without inhaling deeply. Now, only another 40 pounds to go before those nutcase doctors think my BMI is in the right range for someone my height. In the immortal words of Eric Cartman, "I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned". Amen, Cartman, Amen.

Spring Break Week, Revisted...

2005-03-03T13:03:00.000-05:00

OK, the one thing that Spring Break Week has taught me (that I sort of already knew) is that I am inherently lazy.

I had all of these plans to stay at home and get lots and lots of work done, but thus far, I have accomplished the following:

1.) Sleeping

2.) Watching TiVo-ed Star Trek and West Wing Episodes

3.) Laundry

4.) Did I mention sleeping?

Notice how work-related activities are conspicuously absent from that list of items...

My main difficulty here I believe is that I just don't like my job all that much, and therefore I find it difficult to be motivated to do the work that is required for it...

Also, there are typically little to no consequences for me not doing things...I check in with no one, no one cares if i show up or not, blah blah blah...Some people would find that liberating I guess, but I have always been one for more structure...

Anyway, I still have some time this afternoon to try and salvage the work-week...We'll see what happens...

Spring Break Week!

2005-02-28T10:44:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, Spring Break...

One of the perks of being a professor is spring break week. All of the students head out, there are no classes to be taught, and half of the staff seems to go on vacation as well. You would think that this would be an excellent chance for me to catch up on a lot of things that I have been meaning to do all semester, but haven't been able to.

I'll let you know how that goes at the end of this week. ;-)

This weekend was relaxing for a change...maybe it was because I knew I had this whole week to get stuff done, and therefore didn't bring any work home at all. Friday night the wife and I cat-sit for some friends who were out of town. Now, normally I don't consider myself a cat person. Every cat that my family has ever owned has been sort of stand-offish and aloof, so I have always considered cats to be somewhat boring. What fun is a pet if you can't play with it and have it do stuff with you?

In any case, this cat is still in the kitten phase, so it is a ton of fun. It runs, it jumps, it plays, and it fetches! I have no idea if it will grow up and morph into a boring aloof cat, but right now, this little guy is a lot of fun.

I always considered myself a dog person, and I still would like to get a dog someday (someday soon, I hope). Our current living situation doesn't allow for a dog, though, and since I don't see our living situation changing (damn expensive Boston housing market! But I digress...) anytime soon, I guess I will continue to be dog-less. I really would like to get some animal though, since they allegedly are very good at reducing stress.

Saturday we spent poking around...Lunch with my sister, then wandering around various places spending money on various things. I had some birthday money to spend, and I managed to finally find a place that had iPod Shuffles in stock. For those not in the know, the iPod shuffle is a very cool, very tiny music player from Apple. Now, I already have a regular iPod, but the shuffle weighs in at less than an ounce, and I told myself that it would be the catalyst that would get me to start going to the gym again. Again, check in with me at the end of the week to see if I kept that goal...

Lastly, yesterday I went to friends house to watch the Extended Edition of the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie. All 4 hours and 15 minutes of it. It kicks ass, especially on a nice big screen high-def TV life my buddy has in his living room. We were originally planning to geek it out hardcore and watch all three extended edition movies in order, but then we realized that was over 12 hours of sitting on our asses, and that, while we are big geeks, we may not be that big...Maybe some other time when we have 12+ hours to kill...

So here I am, Monday morning of Spring Break week...Let's see how it goes...

Only Tuesday...

2005-02-22T19:35:00.000-05:00

Nothing terribly interesting happened today.

I feel like a lot of my days are like this - filled with the boring little inanities of daily routine. This is why I don't talk to my friends more often, I'm sure. I simply have nothing truly interesting to report. Sure, I could blather on about this and that, how my day was, and what I had for breakfast, but in all honesty, I barely care myself...

My sister talks to my Mom every day of the week. I have no idea what I would talk to my Mom about on a daily basis. I call her twice a week to say hi, and I often find myself struggling to come up with interesting things to say, or anything at all. A lot of my days are really rather "lather-rinse-repeat", and so I feel bad wasting people's time babbling about what inconsequential problems I have.

My friends have real problems. My one friend is CEO of his own company that makes incredibly cool high-tech devices. He worries every day about how his business is doing, whether or not he's going to have to fire people, and whether or not the company will go belly-up after many, many years of hard work and effort. He also travels all over the place trying to secure business deals, and has some really crazy people on his management team that make his life waaaay more difficult than it should be. Another friend of mine is in all likelihood getting a divorce. These are real problems. Interestingly, these people seem to never have a shortage of things to talk about. They have good stories. They aren't bitchy, or whiny, or complain-y though - they don't tell 'poor-me' stories, but the conflict in their lives does tend to make for interesting talk.

Seems like there should be a better way to have interesting things to talk about. Maybe I should start doing more interesting things.

Anyway. Only Tuesday...

Winter in New England Can Suck...

2005-02-21T18:32:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I can't fathom why I came further north for graduate school, and then decided to stay and settle here. I guess it is because the summer's can be so fantastically nice that it lulls you into a false sense of security about the long, hard slog that is a New England winter.

I hate snow. I don't have a clear idea in my mind when I started hating snow, but I definitely do. As a child, of course, I loved it. It was fun, and it often meant a day off from school - a free play day out in this rare and wonderful stuff.

I never understood why my parents and folks older than me were always stressed out when it snowed. How could you not like this stuff? Now I know. When you are older, snow ceases to be fun, and is just another one of those things that makes your life more difficult. Most adults have plenty of other things that make their lives difficult enough without Mother Nature throwing in her two cents.

So now, instead of going out and having fun in the snow, building a snowman, sledding, having a snowball fight, I worry about shoveling all of it, getting it off of the car, and then praying that neither me nor someone else on the road is having a bad karma day and ends up totaling said car. No wonder my parents always dreaded the snow. It created a lot of extra work for them.

I have a feeling though, snow is one of those things you enjoys in cycles. When you are a kid, snow is great. When you are an early adult, it's just a pain in the ass. Then you have kids of your own, and it becomes fun again, because you get to experience it through your children. Then of course, your kids grow up and it re-becomes a pain in the ass.

For me, it's definitely in the 'pain in the ass' phase right now...

The Inaugural Post

2005-02-20T21:26:00.000-05:00

Well, everyone else seems to be posting blogs these days, and I do enjoy reading them, so why shouldn't everyone else be subjected to my twisted, often boring ramblings as well?

A little background...I am 29 and a college professor at a University in the northeastern United States. Boston if you must know. Good luck trying to figure out which...you can't swing a dead cat around your head in this town without hitting a University...

I studied Chemical Engineering in college and graduate school. Somehow, somewhere, I got it into my head that I wanted to be a professor. I really enjoyed college and graduate school (in retrospect, of course - I tend to actually hate everything while I am actually doing it), and I always liked the idea of a job where I could pursue problems or ideas that were my own. I never thought that I'd do well in a job where I was being told what to work on, and that work being sacrificed on the altar of corporate idiocy and profit. I truly believe that Dilbert-esque bosses and situations are far more common than most people might believe, and that Scott Adams is just a genius.

So here I am, almost two years into a tenure-track professorship. And can I tell you, I do not have a f**king clue as to what I am doing... Sure, I show up for work every day, and I go through the motions, but I have absolutely no idea what being a professor actually means. If people think that their corporate workplace is bad, and that they would give anything to pursue ideas that were their own and of interest to them, let me tell you, it isn't all it is cracked up to be. A University can (and often is) managed by people who are incredibly incompetent as well, often rivaling their corporate counterparts.

Case in point: I am an experimentalist. By the very nature of that description, I need to perform experiments to do my work. I need to formulate hypotheses, and then carry out experiments designed to test these hypotheses, and gain knowledge from this. It is generally accepted that in order to carry out experiments, one needs a laboratory or other suitable facilities to perform the work in.

That is all well and good, and I would happily be doing experiments, writing papers, and otherwise advancing the cause of humanity and the pursuit of science, but for the little problem of not having a laboratory. That's right. I'm an experimentalist, been at the University for going on 2 years, and I still don't have any freaking lab space. Why you might ask? I can point to a variety of different reasons, but the most obvious is just gross incompetence on the part of the higher ups.

I literally have never seen a more dysfunctional management system in place than I have at my current workplace. One of my friends and colleagues who is a senior faculty member recently had a discussion with the Provost, and the Provost had no idea that I wasn't happily whiling away my time in my lab, churning out results. The f**king provost! The guy I sent letters and emails to this summer telling him about the situation, just magically assumed that in the intervening months, this group of morons, with no intervention, had fixed this sad state of affairs.

This is just one small example of what I have taken to calling the Theatre Absurd. The older I get, the less tolerance and patience for idiocy and incompetence I have, but sometimes, I really just have to laugh at how much of a joke this all seems.

And then I realize that I should probably just shut the hell up, because my problems are trivial in comparison to a lot of other things that people have going on in their lives.

Then again, here I am, 29, and I have no idea what I really want to do with myself, and somedays I just feel like I'm going a little crazy. Or alot.

I watched 'Garden State' with Zach Braff and Natalie Portman this weekend. I really enjoyed it, and it has a kickass soundtrack that I have subsequently downloaded from the iTunes music store. One thing I thought when I watched it was this: Who the hell has a life like this? I never once in my life went to party where people were taking bong hits, popping X, and playing spin the bottle...Maybe I just wasn't running in the right circles...

In any case, I think Zach Braff is awesome, both for this and his work on 'Scrubs'...