At home with family and friends

I arrived at home for the holidays last Friday morning, after taking a 6 am flight out of Dulles. My dad picked me up from the airport and we spent the morning doing some Christmas shopping (okay, he mostly watched while I shopped) and having lunch. It’s rare that I get to spend time with just my dad these days, so it was really nice.

I spent Saturday doing more shopping, then Sunday it was off to see relatives. My mom and I stopped by my grandparents’ house, which was slightly strange considering that they’re my dad’s parents and we went without him. After that we went to my uncle’s house for dinner. His two kids, my cousins, were there, which was great since I haven’t seen Jonathan since we were both in Boston for college over three years ago. He looks the same, acts the same—it’s great. Jonathan has been spending the past year or so working all over the world: India, Ghana, and Costa Rica. Talking with people like him always reinforces my desire to eventually live abroad for a while.

On Christmas Day, Laura and I did our usual breakfast and present-opening with my mom in the morning, then went over to my dad’s house in the afternoon for more presents and dinner. Although my parents were separated by this time last year, my dad agreed to stay over on Christmas Eve so that we could do all our usual family stuff in the morning. This year that wasn’t going to happen, so Laura and I have officially become those kids who do two celebrations for each holiday. It was sad, to be sure, but it was nice to see our parents happier and more relaxed than they probably would have been if we had all spent the day together. The family has also felt a bit disconnected because my older sister Katherine wasn’t able to come home from China to spend Christmas with us, so we’ve all been missing her.

Yesterday I finally saw some people that I’m not related to! I had lunch with Lauren in the afternoon, which was awesome, and then last night it was time for the 3^rd annual Saline Bar Crawl. My town has only about 9,000 people, so as you might imagine, a bar crawl through the “city” only hits up 3 bars. To make matters worse (or easier?), only two of them were open last night. So we started at the Brecon Grille, which is located right at what we call the Four Corners—the main stoplight in our town. It’s a relatively nice place with good food and several beers on tap, so it’s a good place to start. After everyone’s had a bit to drink and their beer standards are slightly lower, we head to Dan’s Downtown Tavern, which is a more typical dive bar with a regular crowd of old men. The beer is even cheaper, but you leave smelling like a cigarette butt. Regardless, we love it, and last night it was clear that many other recent Saline grads do too, because we ran into several other groups of younger people there. The first Saline Bar Crawl involved only four of us, last year was a little bigger, but this year was the biggest turnout we’ve had: 10! Hanging out all those guys always helps me remember why I love going back to Saline and why I need to make more of an effort to stay in touch throughout the year. Plus, it helps to remember where everyone is these days and where one might have a dinner companion if traveling through Austin, TX, or New York City, for example... :)

Today I’m heading down to Detroit to see my grandparents again, but this time with many other people. My aunt’s coming in from Atlanta and I'll finally get to meet my newest first-cousin-once-removed. Tonight I have to finish packing and then tomorrow it’s back to DC!

Eyeball update, part 23745961

So, the good news is that my eyeballs are FINALLY starting to look better. The bad news is that it’s taken a lot of medication and a lot of waiting. I saw an optometrist here pretty much as soon as I got my health insurance set up through work, which was around the end of August. She confirmed what my general physician at school had said, that my symptoms sounded a lot like ocular rosacea, not allergies; however, for reasons that I don't fully understand, she’s been reluctant to actually diagnose me with it. So the official diagnosis right now is blepharitis, which is an inflammation of the eyelids. It’s something that can be caused by rosacea though, so I have an appointment with a dermatologist on Wednesday to see if he can tell me if that’s been contributing to my eye problems and if so, how to keep it under control.

Since my August appointment with my eye doctor, I’ve been on an oral antibiotic and was briefly taking a combination antibiotic/steroid eyedrop. The antibiotics are used because they’re anti-inflammatories, not because it’s some sort of bacterial infection. Anyway, it takes a couple months for the antibiotic to work its way into your system, so it’s been only recently that I’ve seen an improvement in how my eyes look. The itching has been significantly reduced though, so that’s also helped with the redness. My optometrist was optimistic that I could eventually wear contacts again, and although my eyes aren’t clear enough for me to feel comfortable putting in contacts yet, I’m really hoping that time is coming.

Although I’ve been really glad over the past few weeks to see actual, lasting improvement in my eyes, it’s been hard to not to dwell on all the what-ifs from the past. Was there something I used before that triggered the rosacea, since it doesn’t run in my family? How different would the past two years have been if the first ophthalmologist I saw had known what this was? Would it have taken less time to clear up?

In some ways I’ve gotten more used to wearing glasses than I ever thought I could. But that doesn’t stop me from gazing jealously at my little sister’s perfectly pale eyelids over lunch last weekend, or getting annoyed with co-workers who have perfectly healthy eyes and choose to wear glasses instead of contacts, and admit that it’s just due to laziness. That is something I will never understand—why would you ever choose to just wear glasses when you could be using contacts? I understand not wanting to stick something in your eye, believe me. When I first got contacts in high school, it took me two unsuccessful hours at the doctor’s office, crying, going home, and another hour at the office the next day before I could finally keep my eye open long enough to get the contact in. It then took me another half hour to be able to get them out. Trust me, if I can do it, anyone can do it.

And okay, I understand that it’s nice to be able to just take your glasses off whenever you want to take a nap. But those things will never outweigh the benefits of how much better your vision is with contacts because you actually have peripheral vision and how much more convenient it is to go through life without a hunk of metal and glass permanently affixed to your face.

Hmm... I guess I had a rant I needed to get out.

Anyway, over the past several days, I’ve tried to readjust my outlook from what-if, why-me to something more positive. I’ve finally found a doctor who knows what I have and has a plan to treat it. My eyes ARE getting better and they rarely hurt anymore. Although the antibiotic has some annoying side effects, at least there is medication. The other things that I need to do on a regular basis to get/keep my eyes healthy—get plenty of sleep, exercise, drink lots of water, stay out of the sun—are things that I should be doing anyway, so now I have additional motivation. The bottom line, most important thing I have to remind myself to be thankful for is that this isn’t something that affects my vision. It could be worse.

The other thing this has helped me get into perspective is that you never know what problems other people are dealing with, medical or otherwise. There are a couple of people at work that I’ve talked to about my eye problems, and my medical issue is probably more visible than many, but in general, I keep it to myself. How many other people at work are dealing with some sort of medical problem of their own or their child’s, or some other personal/family issue that they wouldn’t feel comfortable discussing? The fact that someone looks fine doesn’t always mean a lot.

DC weekend with Laura

On Friday before leaving work for happy hour, a coworker asked me what I had planned for the weekend. “My little sister’s visiting!” I said. Him: “Oh. How little are we talking about? Like, 12?” Hmm... I guess I should start referring to my 22-year-old sister as “younger,” not “little.”

Anyway, Laura arrived later that night and we spent the rest of the evening just hanging out and catching up. On Saturday we headed downtown to do the whirlwind tour of Washington. We went to the Capitol first and wanted to go on a tour, but all of the people in line looked like they had special nametags, so we assumed that we hadn’t planned ahead enough to get tickets or something. Later on we decided to go back to ask one of the guards what the story was, and he told us that anyone can get tickets, but they just ran out 10 minutes ago. Whoops...



After our non-tour of the Capitol, we walked toward the mall to get back on the metro, but we took a slight detour because I had to pee. The nearest bathroom was in the United States Botanic Garden. After my beeline to the restroom, we wandered through the different geographic “locations” and admired all of the plants we couldn’t pronounce and didn’t recognize. The best part was that the indoor garden has a skywalk, so you can admire the rainforest from above. Pretty cool! Here’s Laura on the skywalk:


This is one of the things I love about DC—you’re just looking for a bathroom and then you stumble upon some amazing exhibit.

After we made it out of the garden, we took the metro north to Dupont Circle. The first order of business was lunch, then we followed the Lonely Planet’s recommended walking tour of Embassy Row. I tested Laura on her international flag skills, and she definitely scored higher than I did. Some of the embassies were very impressive, but others looked like just a random row house with a strange flag and unintelligible plaque outside. I wonder how you get onto the United States government’s A list when it comes to embassy housing. A Lonely Planet misprint had us wandering around Dupont Circle for a little longer than we planned trying to find the Spanish Steps, but after finally finding them (and being mostly underwhelmed), we got back on the metro to see the National Cathedral. Another Lonely Planet misprint, however, left us wandering around some random part of northwest Washington for about half an hour before we gave up on seeing the Cathedral and headed back to the Capitol area.

The sun was setting when we arrived at the Supreme Court, making for some squinty shots of us but some beautiful views of the building.



We couldn’t skip the third branch of the government once we had already visited the first two, so we headed over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We got to the back of the White House before the sun set completely, so we were able to get a couple of decent pictures.


By the time we got around to the front though, it was a different story... This was the best I could come up with:


We went home early because Laura wasn’t feeling well, so we weren’t able to eat at Jaleo. It might have been for the best though, because we were both pretty tired. It’s amazing how just a few months out of college can make your walking muscles shrivel.

Laura and I spent Sunday shopping instead of trying to run downtown again for a couple hours before her flight left. I had been wanting to get an indoor plant for a little while, so we headed to Lowe’s and each picked up a Bonsai tree. It’s pretty cute, but I’ve discovered, after a little online research, that a Bonsai tree is pretty much the most high maintenance houseplant you can get. That combined with my “gardening skills” probably gives the poor plant about a 15% chance at life beyond one month.

Pumpkins!

So it’s not quite Halloween, but Josh is going to be out of town on Wednesday, so we decided to carve our pumpkins a few days early. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, and I first carved my pumpkin’s features way too small, so you couldn’t really see any light through the pumpkin. The candle even went out when I put the top on! So, back to the drawing board... but after gouging my pumpkin a little more, success!

While we were getting the camera set up so that we could sit behind our pumpkins, Josh’s pumpkin started to get a little asthmatic, so he had to resuscitate it while I fiddled with the camera.


But finally we got everything together.

A few pictures to go along with the previous entry

I took a few pictures at the Library of Congress last weekend, but the ones with flash looked pretty dark on my camera’s tiny screen, so I tried to take the next couple without the flash, which turned out to be a bad idea. Anyway, here’s the ceiling in one of the main rooms:


Here’s the floor of that same room, although a little blurrier...


I only took one picture outside while we were wandering around the mall—this was taken the steps in front of the Capitol, looking down the mall toward the Washington Monument.


Going downtown, especially to Capitol Hill, the White House, or the monuments, always makes me appreciate living here, even though I don’t actually live in the District. It’s easy to get cynical about politics and the politicians in particular, but walking around those buildings and getting to do things like read the actual Declaration of Independence at the National Archives always gives me a renewed sense of appreciation for the way our country was founded and what our current leaders do here.

And last, Josh’s dad took a picture of Josh and me at Cosi, enjoying our s’mores. :)

Ahh, Friday night... that magical time where you bask in the glow of your computer screen, wander the deserted hallways on the way to the bathroom, and savor the peace and quiet in your office that only comes when everyone else has left for the weekend.

Or not. UGH, I can’t believe I'm still here. The worst part is that the guy who asked me for the data left hours ago—must be nice.

In other news, Josh and I finally got together for lunch today. For months I put that on my list of “won’t it be great to be able to do _____ together once we finally live in the same place?” things to do with Josh, and it was nice today. It was pouring, of course, but we managed to find a mostly-equidistant place to have lunch and catch up in the middle of the day. We probably won’t do it very often though, since our offices are relatively far apart.

Last weekend Josh’s parents came to visit, so we had dinner together on Friday, went to the Library of Congress on Saturday, and lounged around my apartment on Sunday watching football. If you haven’t visited the Library of Congress before and are planning a trip, my advice is to lower your expectations. The architecture and paintings/sculptures were nice, and I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but the Library didn’t quite live up to it. Our tour guide was pretty good though, and I was tempted to get a library card just so that I could say that I have one. You know, so I can whip it out at parties and impress all my friends... In any case, we had perfect fall weather last weekend, so the four of us spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the National Mall. Later that evening we took the metro to Old Town Alexandria and did some more wandering and eating. We went to Cosi for dinner, which wasn’t all that remarkable except for the fact that you can get s’mores for dessert. Mmm...

In other, other news, my former thesis advisor is trying to get me to write a paper and submit it to an AIAA conference (or journal). He’s mentioned this to me before, and when he would try to bring it up while I was still trying to graduate, I did the “la, la, la, I can’t hear you!” routine because I literally couldn’t imagine a time when my thesis would be done and I could concentrate on other things. But I guess now enough time has passed and my memory has gotten foggy enough that I’m actually considering it. Well, that, and the fact that my advisor casually mentioned that the next GN&C conference will be in Honolulu.

!!!

So maybe I’ll dust off the ol’ thesis and see if I can’t put a paper together. Hawaii definitely provides some incentive.

Happy birthday, Laura!

Happy belated birthday to my little sister Laura, who turned 22 yesterday! My gift to her is a trip to visit me in Washington, D.C. in a couple of weeks. Laura’s already picked out a Spanish restaurant that she wants to go to, and we’ll probably hit up at least one of the (free!) Smithsonian museums, but the rest of the weekend is still up for grabs. I’m looking forward to doing some touristy stuff that weekend, partly because I don’t make it downtown very often, and partly because I’m hoping most of the summer crowds have left. Somehow, Laura getting older doesn’t phase me all that much, but when I think about the fact that my next birthday will bring me closer to age 30 than to age 20, I get a little weirded out. And sometimes I can barely believe that my older sister Katherine is already 28...

Anyway, speaking of playing tourist, Josh’s parents are coming into town this weekend, so I’m looking forward to spending time with them, although I’m not sure what they’ll want to do while they’re here. If nothing else, they’ll have to play the Wii if they come over to my apartment. :)

Oh, and I almost forgot—my mom is leaving for China tomorrow! She’s spending about 10 days over there visiting Katherine. I think my mom’s a bit apprehensive about spending that many hours on a plane (who wouldn’t be??), but she’s really looking forward to seeing my sister. I don’t usually think of my mom as a big traveler, but she’s got all sorts of cool trips lined up—China, a mission trip to the Gulf Coast this winter, and a potential month-long stint in Brussels! The Brussels thing would be for work, and admittedly, it sounds like it’s in the early maybe/maybe not stage right now, but I’m definitely pulling for it. I mean, come on—someone’s got to go along to help her look for an apartment and get to know the area, right? ;)

I’d say it’s about time for an update...

First off, my sincere apologies to my grandma for not updating in basically forever. :) There was the thesis, graduation, the summer of glorious unemployment, the trip to Europe, the time at home, the move, the new job, and the being in a relationship in which the people involved can finally talk to each other in person each night instead of on the phone. Amazing! What will they think of next??

My new job has been going fine. It’s not spectacular, but it’s not bad, and there are some nice perks that come with working for a relatively small space company. Tonight, however, is not one of them—it’s nearly 7 pm and leaving work is still a ways away. The schedule for this program is very tight, and that combined with my general lack of knowledge about what I’m doing can make for some long days at work.

The most important change that’s happened over the past several months is that my parents, married for 31 years, are now divorced. The past several years have been rocky for them, so my sisters and I shouldn’t have been shocked when we found out, but it’s been a struggle to deal with. My parents told us their intentions to split up back in December, but the divorce wasn’t finalized until about a month ago. I seem to oscillate between these overwhelming pangs of despair because it feels like my family is disintigrating, and periods of calm where I realize that although a lot’s changing—my parents are separating, they’re selling our house, my dad’s getting remarried—everyone’s still alive and healthy and polite to each other. Since December, my periods of calm are now outnumbering the times of despair, so it’s seems that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Ew, ew, ewwwww

Soon after my roommate and I first moved into our current apartment, we discovered that we had ants. Ew. My mom and I bought ant traps and I called the management company to get them to come out and spray. It all seemed to work, because up until yesterday, I only saw a couple of ants during the entire rest of the year, probably ones that had hitchhiked their way in from outside on my shoes.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. I’ve been out of town for the past week and a half, and I came back last night to discover that the ants were back. Worse, they were on the countertop nearest to the trash instead of just on the floor. Ewwwww. So I took out the trash, vacuumed, washed the counters and nearby wall, and rearranged the ant traps. Problem (mostly) solved.

This morning I woke up to find a scrap of toast on the floor and a SMALL ARMY OF ANTS! EEEEWWWWWW! I am so looking forward to moving tomorrow and finally having my own place.

~~~~~

I know I haven’t posted a trip report of eastern Europe, but I haven’t forgotten about it. It feels intimidating to sort through our hundreds of pictures, as well as put together something that’s insightful, intelligent, witty, and fun-to-read... but it’s still coming, I promise.

New home

Josh and I got back from our eastern Europe trip on Monday, and I'm finally starting to feel like I'm re-adjusting to being home. I'm not going back to Boston until Monday, so I've had plenty of time to finish apartment-hunting and start on the rest of the things on my to-do list.

But first, I finally have a new apartment! I'm not moving in for another 3 weeks yet, but I'm signing the lease tomorrow and can finally get started with all the other stuff that I couldn't do before because I didn't have a permanent address in Virginia. I decided to try living by myself, so I'm in a 1 bedroom / 1 bath:

There are several other pictures on the website of the apartment complex and the model apartment (complete with plastic pie in the kitchen...).

However, I have no furniture, so my living room won't have a nice couch or coffee table for a while.

A few things

1. I graduated!!!!!!!!! I turned in my thesis on time, my advisor finally emerged from his house in the ’burbs to sign it, and I walked across the stage to accept my degree. Proof:

My family (minus my older sister, who’s in China) and Josh came for the weekend and sat through the blistering heat to see... mostly the backs of other people’s heads. They were gracious enough not to complain too much. :)



Although the Ph.D./Sc.D. graduates wear the funky robes & hats, the masters students look mostly like undergrads, with the exception of weird sleeve extensions on the gown. We joked that it was my bat costume:

My officemate put the sleeve extensions to good use: they held her lip balm, cell phone, and sunglasses throughout the ceremony.

My family, Josh, and I spent the rest of the weekend being tourists. Here we are in Beacon Hill:


2. Josh and I are going to eastern Europe for two weeks! I originally decided to go because a good friend of mine from high school is living in Prague, but since Josh was able to take some more time off from work, we’re going to be able to also visit Budapest, Krakow, and possibly Warsaw. I’m super excited about the trip, but since we haven’t had much time to plan for it, there’s still a lot to do before we leave on Monday.

3. I went home for a few days after graduation, hung out with my family a lot, and saw all of the remodeling that’s been going on at my parents house, which they’re getting ready to sell. I also picked up my car and drove it to DC so that it’ll be there when I start work in August. Have I mentioned that I accepted the Virginia job? It was a really tough decision, but I felt like I’d be missing a once-in-a-career opportunity if I passed up the job now. I’m not convinced that this is a place that I’ll want to stay for years and years, but it’s the best decision for me at this point.

4. I started apartment-hunting in DC earlier this week. I found two complexes in the Reston/Herndon area that I liked, but I wasn’t sold on either of them enough to fill out an application on the spot. Plus, I might end up rooming with two other girls that I met through craigslist, in which case I might end up further south, like Fairfax. I haven’t met either of the girls yet, although we have a “date” lined up for this Sunday. I’ve only been on one other girl date—the time I met my Houston roommate before we moved in together—so I’m not really sure what to expect.

5. Earlier this week I spilled milk on my laptop keyboard and ruined it. At first I thought it might dry out and be okay, but I still can’t get several of the keys to work, so I ordered a new keyboard through Dell yesterday. It figures—I ate breakfast and dinner in front of my computer nearly every day for the past semester and it was fine, but four weeks after school’s over, I dump something on it. My idiot mistake is costing me $35 and currently, some awkward use of a old external keyboard.

Deadline

Today is my department's thesis deadline. I'm at 233 pages. It's 5am, and I'm tiiired. I think this was my first all-nighter since undergrad. Ugh, I'm old.

My faculty thesis advisor is in the process of giving me an ulcer. He is mysteriously unreachable, and I need to get my title page signed today. He wanted to see a more up-to-date draft when I talked to him on Wednesday, but he promised he'd sign my thesis when I brought him the draft on Thursday morning. Well, yesterday came and went with no sign of the man. So today is the final day... the process of turning everything in becomes significantly stickier if he's MIA again.

In the continuing trend of my whining, LaTeX takes FOR-E-VER to compile and display my thesis. Therefore (heh, I've gotten so used to using words like "therefore," "whereby", "thus," etc.), I have to wait nearly 5 minutes for it to chug and redisplay when I recompile after any changes.

I'm tempted to lie down for an hour or so, but I'm afraid I'll feel even worse if I sleep. Plus, there's always the added panic of, "what if my alarm doesn't go off?!?" Oh, nevermind... I forgot that I haven't finished my acknowledgements. I guess I'm staying up.

182 pages and counting...

About 150 of those pages are the actual thesis; the rest are appendices. I still have to add Appendix B (additional results), finish Appendix A (detailed description of my algorithm), write the abstract, and make any final changes that my advisor can come up with on Monday. The thesis deadline is Friday. It's going to be close, but it'll happen. IT WILL HAPPEN.

They've started putting up the graduation stuff on the lawn. It's currently getting soaked in the rain, but it was another reminder today as I was walking to work that the end of the term is actually here. Apparently this coming week is finals week? It's amazing how insulated you can get from that stuff when you don't have any finals to take. :)

The newest demotivator

From despair.com:


For the past few years, my dad and I have given each other a Demotivators® calendar from for Christmas. In college, I always had the calendar up on my wall, and once another friend of mine gave me a real motivational poster. “I saw your calendar and thought you might like this,” she said innocently. I chuckled to myself because that’s what I love about these (aside from the biting sarcasm, of course)—if you don’t look closely to read the fine print, it looks like any other drippy motivational poster that you see ads for in Skymall.

You know you’ve been staring at Matlab too long when...

... your thesis plots start to look like robots! These figures look completely boring when they’re stretched out, but when they’re munched up like this, I think they look like cute little aliens. :)

When I get a little stressed, I eat a lot. Usually in front of the TV, trying to unwind. When I get more stressed, I eat very little. I’m barely hungry, not much sounds appetizing, and even if I do manage to find something I’m interested in eating, I can’t eat very much. I was doing okay in this department until yesterday. I couldn’t eat much breakfast and my lunch made my stomach turn. This morning, breakfast was a lost cause.

I gave my technical advisor a draft of chapters 6-7 of my thesis yesterday. He’s already seen chapters 4 & 5, but I’m still working on chapter 8 (results) and haven’t really started chapters 1-2 (intro & equations of motion) or chapter 9 (future work). Chapter 3 is written, but the first part needs to be axed. After all that’s done, I need to write the abstract. Did I mention I’m supposed to have a complete draft by Monday to give to my faculty advisor? On my schedule for next week is writing the appendices, which will be detailed diagrams of my algorithm and the original algorithm, as well as the zillions of plots that I can’t include in chapter 8. Last are the acknowledgments. If I can make it that far, I’ll know I’m gonna make it.

Bike seat

Last week, my fantastic boyfriend offered to run errands for me while I worked on writing my thesis. One of these such errands was getting my bike fixed. I usually leave my bike locked up to a parking meter outside my apartment, which means that it gets mangled from time to time by inept parallel parkers or stumbling drunk college students. For example, one day I came outside to find that overnight the chain had come completely off the front rings and was hanging by the right pedal. The last time I rode my bike before winter was in full swing, I noticed that the rear brake was sticking to the hopelessly misaligned rear tire and at regular intervals, it would make a horrendous squealing noise (and jerk me forward when I was trying to coast). When I tried to brake, I got a low roar. The combination sounded like a cat getting run over by a garbage truck.

I figured I’d look into it later, since I wasn’t planning to ride my bike much in the snow. I brought it inside and promptly forgot about it. A friend of mine makes and fixes bikes, so when the weather got nicer and I remembered, I tried to coerce him into fixing my bike with an ice cream payment. But somehow we could never settle on a good time to do all of this.

Enter: Josh. Of course, by the time Josh wrestled my bike down the four flights of stairs to get it outside, the squealing was at a minimum. “So, what exactly is wrong with your bike?” he asks. I swear, it was worse in the cold! In any case, the bike is now fixed, rideable, and much less noisy. :)

So now that the weather’s nice, I’m back to riding my bike to work. The only problem is that since it’s been a while since I last rode regularly, I haven’t redeveloped the callouses or posture necessary to keep my (ahem) butt from getting bruised by the seat. Ouch.

The longest document I have ever written

My thesis draft has now exceeded 100 pages! A few people have asked me if I have a page goal, and the answer is no. I’m writing as much as it takes to explain what I need to explain. I imagine it will be about 150 pages of actual text and maybe 30 pages of appendices. Hitting 100 pages was just cool because it’s a round number and I’ve never written anything this long before.

When I was looking at different graduate schools, I found that several places offered non-thesis options for the master’s degree—it was just based on coursework. While that appealed to my laziness, I suspected that a thesis degree would carry more weight with potential employers. Now that I’ve finished my job interview circuit, I still can’t say for sure whether more opportunities have been open to me because I’m doing a thesis, but I like to think so. :) There had better be some payoff at the end of this mess! In any case, it’ll be nice to be “published,” I guess. Bonus if my advisor and I can put together a conference or journal paper afterward.

~~~

I was washing my hands in the bathroom after lunch today, along with this woman who’s in there practically every afternoon re-applying her makeup. She looked at me and said, “Are you a student here?” I smiled and said yes. “Okay,” she continued. “I looked at you and thought to myself, ‘she can’t be old enough to work here!’” Apparently I’m 25 going on 12.

Josh and I celebrated our two year anniversary this past weekend. We didn’t actually do much since I'm still frantically writing my thesis, but it was really nice to just spend some time together since we haven’t seen each other in a while.

Speaking of the thesis, it looks like this might actually happen—I might actually graduate on time. I was really worried for a long time that I’d have to stay here for the summer, after everyone else had left. It’s still going to be tough to finish everything in the next three weeks, but I think it’s do-able. It helps that my officemate is in the same boat, so we’ve been able to commiserate on our behind-schedule-ness.

About a week and a half ago, the weather here started to get really nice. I walked to work everyday, amazed that the sun still actually existed. The only problem was that it was also pretty windy, which created some problems for my eyes. Because (watch out, armchair ophthalmologist diagnosis coming...) my corneas were damaged from being irritated for such a long time and are only now slowly getting better, my eyes still dry out very easily in the wind. I noticed that my eyes were itchy and red after my mom and I spent a weekend at the Cape last September (windy), this whole mess started when Lauren and I were tramping around England for a week last spring (windy), and my eyes were itchy and dry after ice skating for a day with some girls from work a couple months ago (also windy, although some may have been self-generated).

A few days ago though, I realized that even though this whole eye ordeal has really sucked, this was probably the best time for it to happen. I’ve been so busy with school this past year that even if my eyes were cooperating, I haven’t had time to do a lot of outdoor stuff where I just couldn’t wear glasses. Plus, I haven’t had to drive on a regular basis in grad school, where wearing my glasses definitely cuts down on my peripheral vision.

Pronunciation

I just finished reading The Bookseller of Kabul last week (which I highly recommend), but I can’t tell anyone about it because I don’t really know how to pronounce “Kabul.” Is it KAH-bul? Ka-BUHL? I googled it this morning and found this fantastic article about more problems than just pronouncing the name of Afghanistan’s capital. And according to the author, the jury’s still out on the official English pronunciation of “Kabul.”

A reason to appreciate growing up as a Yankee

Seen this afternoon on CNN:

Students attend first integrated prom

At first I couldn’t figure out what “integrated” was supposed to mean. Then I thought, that couldn’t mean what I think it means... could it?

Students of Turner County High School started what they hope will become a new tradition: Black and white students attended the prom together for the first time on Saturday.

Whoa. Does this really still happen in 2007?

Adkinson’s sister, Mindy Bryan, attended a segregated prom in 2001.

“There was not anybody that I can remember that was black,” she said. “The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It’s nothing racial at all.”

My jaw dropped as I kept reading.

Nichols said while her parents were in support of the integrated prom, some of her friends weren’t allowed to go.

“I’ve asked, ‘Why can’t you come?’ and they’re like, ‘My mommy and daddy—they don’t agree with being with the colored people,’ which I think is crazy,” she said.

Do people really still say “colored”? I understand that racism in America hasn’t gone away, but I never realized that we still have such a long way to go.

Kevin Spacey closes the bridge

On Saturday, I found out that the bridge I normally cross to get to work every day was going to be closed on Sunday so that it could be used to shoot scenes for an upcoming movie. The movie is “21,” and it’s based on the true story of MIT students who made millions of dollars by counting cards playing blackjack in Las Vegas. There’s already a book about these kids calling Bringing Down the House, which I highly recommend if you haven’t read it.

Anyway, I had heard that the bridge would be open between takes for pedestrians and cyclists, so I decided to take my chances. When I got to the bridge though, police weren’t letting anyone across. I guess Kevin Spacey has a little more clout with the city of Boston than I do. And I was bummed that didn’t even get to see anyone famous!

The bridge reopened by the time the Yankees-Red Sox game got underway last night. The game must have been pretty intense because I could hear the crowd cheering at Fenway Park around midnight last night, all the way from my apartment in Kenmore Square. I don’t miss all the loud drunks by 4 am, but living down the street from Fenway Park is pretty cool. I’m definitely going to miss Boston.

The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train

My, my... it’s been a while. Things are crazy busy here, so there hasn’t been much time for other things besides sleep, food, and thesis. Several weeks ago, my advisor told me that he didn’t think I’d be able to graduate on time because I kept having setbacks with the algorithm I’m developing. It seemed like each day I’d come into work, having runs several simulations overnight, and there’d be some case where my algorithm burped on something that I hadn’t anticipated. So, I’d spend most of the day fixing it and then I’d run some more cases overnight, and then something different would be wrong the next morning. This went on and on until it was way past the point that I needed to actually start writing.

Which brings us to now. I’ve fixed most of the major things, so my algorithm is giving much better results, although it still has some minor problems. But my advisor agreed when I told him (adamantly) that I wanted to graduate this spring. The problem is that this leaves me with basically three weeks to write my entire thesis and run all the sims I need to collect my data. To this end, I’ve been spending almost every waking hour in front of a computer. The last thing I feel like doing when I get home is spending more time in front of a computer, blogging.

Anyway. As part of my post-thesis life, about a month ago I accepted the Virginia job. I’m really excited about the work, although I have some reservations about the company as a whole, so I’m not sure how long I'll stay. It was a really tough decision, but in the end, what made my decision was the fact that I thought if I took the Maryland job, I’d always wonder about the work at the Virginia job, and I didn’t think that would happen the other way around. We’ll see, I guess. I’m definitely looking forward to working with some old friends, and I’m excited about moving back to DC. I love DC. Not to mention that my favorite person in the whole world will be mere miles away, rather than a whole plane ride away. :)

In typical procrastination fashion, I’ve already spent too much time online looking for apartments and cars when I should be writing my thesis. There are so many decisions to make! I can’t decide if I want to live by myself or with roommates, closer to DC or closer to work, buy a new car or a used car... The smart thing to do, I know, is live close to work, get a roommate, and buy a used car. Ugh. But the thing is, I’ve never lived on my own before. I’ve lived with my parents, shared some dorm rooms, and shared many apartments. I also know that at some point, Josh and I will move in together, so is this my only chance to live by myself? However, if I’m not actually going to be spending much time there, then it would be a lot cheaper to have a roommate.

And then there’s the city. Downtown DC is about 30 miles away from where I’ll be working. I don’t want to live downtown (couldn’t afford it and not crazy about the crime...), but it would be fun to live in Arlington or Falls Church. The drive isn’t terrible because I’d be reverse-commuting from the typical burbs-to-city folk, but I also don’t want to waste 1-2 hours per day sitting in my car. But living near the city would be a lot more fun than living in the suburbs... I have my entire life to live in the burbs. However, if I lived closer to work, I could bike to work when the weather’s decent, which would be really cool. If I go the roommate route, the rent would be about the same for either area. If I wanted to get my own apartment, cost would be more of a discriminator, I think.

I’ve almost managed to convince myself that if I “settle” for living closer to work, I can splurge by getting my own apartment and buying a new car. Not sure that’s a fair “trade,” but that’s what I’m thinking...

Shuttle launch

Allegedly, these pictures of the STS-115 launch were taken from the space station. I'm not convinced that's true or if these were taken from the high altitude chase planes that are in the air during shuttle launches, but regardless of where they came from, these are some pretty cool shots.



Some discussion of the origin of the photos is here.

You know it’s the end of the interview when...

Last Tuesday night I flew down to D.C. for my LAST interview. I left the hotel early on Wednesday morning to beat traffic and made it to the site early enough to run through the presentation I had to give just one more time in the car. I didn’t have a lot to eat that morning because I was a little nervous and didn’t have much of an appetite, but it was only going to be a morning interview, so I figured I’d have plenty of time for lunch afterward.

The interview was pretty low-key. I met with the group supervisor for about an hour, then he took me on a two-hour tour of their lab facilities. After that we went back to his office and talked a little bit more, then he rounded up the rest of his group to be an audience for my presentation. We finished around noon, and since the interview was essentially over, I was now really looking forward to eating lunch. But the supervisor asked me if I’d be interested in talking with some other people in the group to get a better idea of what they do on a daily basis, so to be the good interviewee, I said yes.

We started walking down the hall toward another guy’s office and the supervisor started telling me about his recent LASIK surgery. He went into all kinds of gory detail about the procedure and how his eyes felt like they were on fire afterward as we strolled down the hall. I started to feel a little light-headed by the time we got to the office - I reached out for the doorframe to steady myself, but before I could sit down, I started getting tunnel vision.

The next thing I knew, I was flat on the floor on my back. Apparently I passed out and fell straight backwards. In the process, I guess I dumped the rest of my cup of water onto myself, the floor, and my interviewer (let’s call him Bob). As I was lying down, getting my bearings, I overheard ambulance sirens and Bob told me that he had called the paramedics. When they got to the building, they stormed right in and put me in the neck collar, on the backboard, and rushed me into the ambulance. I gave my medical history and the description of the kind of pain I was in to at least five different people.

I’ve fainted before, so this all seemed like a really big fuss for something that wasn't really a big deal. But by the time I was velcroed into the collar and on the board, it was a little late to say no. They took me to a nearby hospital, where I had an EKG, a chest CT, and gave away large amounts of bodily fluids. It took four different nurses and 9 different “sticks” to get enough blood drawn for the tests and to get an IV in for the iodine they had to inject as dye for the chest CT.

When I was in high school, I had to get a tuberculosis test before I could volunteer at the local hospital. When I went to my doctor’s office to get tested, the nurse there chuckled as she jabbed the stubby needle into my arm a couple times. “Gosh, you’ve got tough skin!” she said. As the second nurse at the hospital last week was trying to draw blood out of my shriveled veins, I told her what the other nurse had told me back in high school. “Well,” she said, “it might sound silly, but you really do have tough skin.”

It was sort of a toss-up which was more uncomfortable: getting poked with needles over and over or getting the chest CT. The actual scan didn’t hurt, but the iodine has to go into your veins quickly right before the scan, and that burns when it goes in. It makes you feel warm all over and kind of like you peed in your pants...

A little while after I originally got to the hospital, Bob showed up to make sure that I was okay. It was nice of him to come, since it sucks to be in the hospital by yourself, but then he started asking me questions about my desired salary range and telling me about how his company does all sorts of unique work. I nodded along for a while, mostly because it was nice to have a distraction from all the trouble my tough skin was causing, but later on, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I have no interest in interviewing in a hospital gown, no matter what job it’s for.

I finally managed to convince Bob that he didn’t have to feel bad about leaving me in the hospital, so for a while I just slept on my bed in the hallway while I waited for my test results (only the really sick or injured people got rooms). I was exhausted with all the drama of the day and my missing blood. When I woke up, magically, Josh was there.



I went home with a mostly clean bill of health; thankfully, no serious cause for the fainting. And luckily, the HR department at the company was very generous in re-booking me a flight home the next day and not complaining when I brought the rental car back late.

One of the nurses from the hospital asked me if my chances of getting the job were better or worse after fainting. I have no idea, but I’m not sure I could take the job even if I got an offer, just out of sheer embarrassment from the whole mess.

Just a couple more

This coming week I have two more interviews, and regardless of how they turn out, they will be the LAST interviews that I go on in the foreseeable future.

The first one is a quick on-campus interview with a large aerospace & defense company. I applied online several months ago and honestly, had basically forgotten about it. I'm not holding out much hope that the interview will lead to anything though. Even if everything goes well and I get a second round interview, I don't think it would happen before I have to make a decision on my other job offers. I'm also not convinced that I'm going to be thrilled about the work, or that I'll even learn any specifics about it very soon.

The second one is on Wednesday with a government agency that I'm much more interested in possibly working for. The only twist about this interview is that I have to give a short presentation at the end. Since it's only supposed to be 15-20 minutes, talking about my thesis wouldn't really be appropriate - it would take much too long to get into any useful detail. Plus, I'd have to make a new set of slides. Yuck.

I'd much rather give an old presentation from a project that I've worked on it the past. My best choice, I think, would be a presentation that I gave toward the end of my year of full-time work. Over the past couple days, I started to panic because I couldn't find the presentation, or anything else that I saved from my time in Houston. It wasn't on my hard drive and I worried that I had been dumb enough to not take any of the work I had done with me when I left.

It turns out that I'm just bad at keeping things organized. Earlier tonight I found the CD with all my work data on it, so I'm pretty sure I'll be able to use one of the presentations for this interview. The lesson to be learned from this is KEEP YOUR WORK! You'll never know when you might need it again. Save big presentations, save your personal records of what you worked on (for example, we wrote "activity reports" every week to turn in to the boss), and save contact information. I copied down email addresses and phone numbers from several people that I worked with, and I've referred to it so many times since I left that I wish I had been smart enough to do that at all the places I've worked in the past.

My ideal job

This time three years ago, I had a job lined up for when I left college and started living in the real world, but I was in the typical 20-something quandary: I had essentially no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be done with school because my education, though pricey, hadn’t prepared me to tackle real engineering problems. But I didn’t want to stay in school because I didn’t know what I wanted to study.

Thus, the job hunt began. I was lucky to be job hunting during a brief time when the government agency that I had always dreamed of working for was hiring. I applied, had a couple interviews, and poof! I had an offer. The deadline to accept or decline was December 1st - way before I had a chance to do any other interviewing.

I had no idea what to do. Here it was, what I thought was my dream job offer, but it somehow felt like a cop-out if I didn't at least see what else was out there. Somehow it was too easy. Everyone I talked to said, “Ooh, tough call!” but didn't offer any real advice when I asked. Thankfully, my academic advisor took on the role of high school guidance counselor for me when no one else would.

So I took the job. I figured I could at least get some experience and beef up the ol’ résumé while I was figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.

Unfortunately, the job didn’t pan out like I had hoped. A lot of that was my fault, but I did manage to learn a few things from it. I at least had a longer list of what I liked and what I didn’t like, both in terms of work and in terms of a company to work for. A year later, I received my acceptance letter to grad school, and over the past year and a half I’ve come even closer to really nailing what kind of work I want to do.

The type of work, I think, is more than half the “describe your ideal job” battle. An engineering degree, it seems, can get you a job just about anywhere. An aerospace engineering degree only limits the field by a little. Some of the topics we studied in school were materials & structures, kinematics & dynamics, fluid dynamics and aerodynamics, thermodynamics, and controls. I knew what I didn’t like (materials) what I kinda liked (aerodynamics), and what I just didn’t get (controls). It wasn’t until I took a propulsion class during my senior year that I learned even a little about astrodynamics (how planets and other things in space move around due to gravity) and thought - hey, this is pretty cool!

The job I took with the government mainly involved spacecraft trajectories - how a hunk of metal wants to move in the atmosphere or in space and how to steer it to follow the path that you want instead. That stuff was pretty neat too. I knew about that kind of work as an intern, but I was never able to land a job actually doing it until I took the government job.

In grad school, much of my classwork has focused on guidance, navigation, and control. Here I finally saw that there was a reason that anyone bothered to understand control theory. I’m still not a huge controls fan, but it’s a necessary evil on the way to doing cooler things, like guidance algorithm development and trajectory design.

Okay, so I’ve gotten a little off-topic. My original point was to whine about how I can’t figure out what job to take! Now that I mostly have the “what kind of work I want to do” figured out, all that’s left are those other “minor” details to figure out - what about all the other stuff besides the work?

I haven’t gotten very far in making a job decision by making a pro/con list for the two companies that have made me offers, so I’m trying to approach it from the other end - what is my ideal job at my ideal company?

I want to have a job where...

• I look forward to going to work every day
• The actual work is interesting to me
• The work, and the company’s mission, is useful - the work benefits others, and has a clear purpose
• I get along well with my co-workers and my boss; the atmosphere is friendly and helpful/supportive
• The hours are reasonable - the job doesn’t take over my life
• The company is respectful of work/life balance
  
• The work is technical, but it involves more than just me sitting in front of a computer all day (I’m already doing this for my thesis and it sucks)
• There’s a good mix of working with people and solving problems on my own
• There’s a variety of work, and the company is willing to accommodate me when my interests change and I want to try something new
• My co-workers are motivated to get things done
  
• The company’s goal is to deliver work that is thorough and correct, not just on-time
• There’s a good mix of young people and older, more experienced engineers
• The company encourages me to expand my horizons and further my education - not necessarily toward a degree, but at least job-related training. Bonus if they have a very broad definition of what’s job-related. :)
  
• It pays enough to cover my expenses, plus some extra to help me save for fun stuff

Stuck in a truck

As I was walking to work this morning, I noticed a few police cars blocking an intersection that I normally cross. I looked closer and saw that they were intentionally blocking the on-ramp to Storrow Drive, a major highway that runs along the Charles River. A semi was stuck on the ramp - the turn was too tight for the trailer to make. The sad thing was that there's a huge sign at the ramp entrance that says "No Trucks." I guess the truck driver was just following another one's lead - last night a different semi truck got stuck on Storrow Drive:


All of this reminded me of the time that Josh and I drove a big yellow Penske truck across the country a couple summers ago. The truck was full of my crap because I was moving from Houston to Boston to start grad school. We mapquested the whole route before we left Houston, but we didn't have street maps for every state in between.

Anyway, we did fine until we got to New York City. Our directions took us through areas that were relatively close to Manhattan (which, looking back, was really a recipe for disaster in itself), and at one point we had to get onto a road that had a "No Trucks" sign. The sign didn't specify why trucks weren't allowed, and it's not like we were carrying any hazardous materials or had a heavy tractor-trailer. I had rented the smallest truck they had, which was really just one step up from a large van. Also, we didn't know any other way to get around New York City, and we only had about 3 seconds to make the decision, so we decided to get on the road.

After a couple miles, it became abundantly clear why trucks weren't allowed on this stretch of highway - the low, curved bridges. The writing on the truck said that its height was 9 feet. The rental agreement, however, specified that we shouldn't go under anything that was lower than 10' 6".

At any other time, and in any other car, those stone bridges would have been very picturesque. They sloped gently over the road and many were covered with moss or other plants, which shone in the afternoon sun. However, we were in the big yellow truck, and the bridges kept getting lower and lower. We passed 11 feet, 10 feet, and then just barely above 9'. My heart was pounding and Josh's knuckles were white. The next bridge came up quickly just after we rounded a corner. The sign read 8' 8".

I panicked. There was no room, or time, to get over into the left lane where the peak of the bridge was higher. Josh slowed down as much as he could in the few feet that we had left, and I held my breath, preparing myself for the sickening scrape and jerk to a halt.

Miraculously, either the bridge or our truck was generously labeled. We slid under the bridge without scraping anything - and then we both started breathing again. Thankfully, there were only a few miles left to go on this road before we got back on the interstate, and the rest of the bridges were above 9 feet.

Once we got to Boston, our directions told us to get onto Storrow Drive to go the rest of the way to my new apartment. Josh refused. There was no way either of us was taking any more chances with low bridges. At least on Storrow Drive though, they have the good sense to post why large trucks shouldn't get on the road.

Maybe height is the default reason why trucks aren't allowed on certain roads, so that's why it's not usually posted. I don't know; I'm not much of a truck driver. I never paid much attention to those signs on the interstate that show the clearance height of upcoming overpasses, but after our trip through New York, I notice them all the time. And these ones hit close to home...

Iceball

This winter storm that has blown through the Northeast and Midwest hasn't quite lived up to the hype, at least here in Boston. It snowed about 4 inches overnight, and now we're down to freezing rain. I decided that I'd rather not risk my neck in the campus shuttle with the crazy drivers and icy roads, so I walked to work this morning. The majority of my walk is across the Harvard Bridge, and it's always pretty windy. This morning I had to hold my hand up on the right side of my face to keep the freezing rain from stinging the part of my cheek that wasn't covered up by my hat or hood.

When I finally made it to work, I took off my gloves and started to put them in my pocket when I felt a lump at the bottom of my right pocket. Evidently I left my jacket pocket open while I was walking, because when I pulled out the lump, it turned out to be a perfectly round iceball, just the size of a cherry tomato.

The prom

Last night was our company's Social Gala - too late to be called a Christmas party, but too early to really be a Spring Fling. So it's affectionately known as the company prom. Anyway, it was at the Boston Courthouse, which was really beautiful. We weren't allowed to bring cameras to the event though, so no pictures. :( A bunch of us Fellows - grad students whose research is being sponsored by the company, like me - went to the event together to take advantage of the all-you-can-eat buffet and to watch our advisors dance to Celebration by KC and the Sunshine Band and other standard wedding reception songs. We giggled a bit at the dancing, but hey, none of us looked particularly good out there, regardless of age, and we were all having a good time. It was when the kissing started during Marvin Gaye's Let's Get it On that we decided it was time to go.

Since we were all dressed up and it was only 11pm, we decided to go to Top of the Hub, which is the restaurant at the top of the Prudential Center. When we got to the Pru however, the hostess on the ground floor told us that the wait to get on the elevator was about 30-40 minutes, and the kitchen and bar close at midnight. By this time it was already almost 11:30, so we decided to skip it and just go to another bar down the street. I spent a ridiculous amount of money last night though, between the ticket and the drinks and the cab... can't do the prom every weekend.

Oh, and I was able to wear my contacts the entire night! My eyes were kind of dry by the time I went to bed, but it was hard to determine how much of that was from the contacts and how much of that was just from the fact that it was 1am...

Early to bed, first in the shower

I have not been doing well on my New Year's resolution to go to bed earlier. This means that I still snooze for way too long in the morning and then get into the shower only about 20 minutes before I used to. For about the first five minutes, all is well in the shower. Then the water starts to get cold. So I turn the handle further toward the hot water. But the water just gets colder. And then the pressure drops until it's barely just a trickle, dribbling out of the shower head. This is fine for activities like shaving, but for anything else you'd want to do, it sucks. Huddling in the back of your tub to avoid getting sprayed with icewater for 10 minutes per shower is not my idea of a fun way to start the day.

I can only guess that I'm taking a shower at the same time as 90% of the rest of our apartment building. The first time it happened was in the evening, so I assumed someone was doing laundry, but I highly doubt that anyone's doing laundry every morning at 8am. The building is pretty old, and apparently the hot water heater can't handle the load when all of us decide to shower at once.

Most of the time, I like my apartment. In fact, I love it every time I write my rent check and marvel at the fact that I'm paying almost $250 less per month than I did last year. The location is fantastic, the building is quiet, and I love the views and sunlight (and no weird upstairs-neighbor noises) that come with living on the top floor. But the building is old, there are old cigarette burns on our carpet from previous tenants, and the bathroom grows mildew like nobody's business because there's no airflow through there. There are things that I'd put more pressure on the management company to fix if we were staying longer, but I've lost interest in fixing most of them because I'm moving in 5 months. I'd like to say that makes me easy going, but it probably just makes me a lazy bum.

Virginia weekend

Last Friday I had another interview with a company in Virginia that I used to work for as a summer intern. It's been several years since I was back there, but it was really nice to see so many of my former coworkers. I got a lot of, "Melanie! Are you back??" "No, just interviewing..."

Any nervousness I had about the whole thing disappeared after my conversation with the second person I interviewed with. I had asked what to expect in this process after my interview today, like when I should expect to hear back from them, and what would happen if I liked both groups I was interviewing with and they both liked me. His response: "Let me just tell you now - unless you punch someone in the face this morning, you're going to get an offer from us."

I convinced the company's travel office to let me stay until Sunday morning instead of flying back on Friday afternoon, so I got to spend the rest of the weekend with Josh. On Friday, we went out to dinner with Phil and Glenn at the Boulevard Woodgrill, then stuck around the area to grab a beer and then go to a party that Josh's friend was throwing. The theme of the party was white trash, and everyone got really into it, so we drank Milwaukee's Best and ate Slim Jims and peanuts. Everyone had dressed the part too. Everyone, that is, except us. It's remarkable how out of place you can feel in normal clothes when everyone else is wearing ripped up wifebeaters, ratty sweatpants or shorts, construction boots, and enormous hoop earrings. One girl even came with a fake pregnant belly.

Saturday was a lot less interesting. I worked on my thesis, Josh worked on his homework, we ran some errands, and we watched the final episode of Band of Brothers. I haven't started the book yet, but I think I have to retract my statement about the book always being better than the movie. First of all, this series is 10 hours long, so you don't have to worry about story lines getting chopped off or cut out because they don't fit into 2.5 hours. Second, there are some scenes (mostly gruesome ones) that just couldn't be conveyed as powerfully through words. There's a significant amount of narration throughout the series, but there are many scenes, particularly the ones where Easy Company is in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, where narration is completely unnecessary, and in many cases would have taken away from the impact of the scene.

After a long delay at the airport the next morning, I returned to Boston to get back to my boring life: grocery shopping, unpacking, post-interview thank-you emails, and of course, watching the OC episode that I missed from Thursday. :)

Yesterday was a fun-filled day out in Natick, MA. My all-day interview started out well, but it sort of went downhill in the afternoon. The company is small - around 1,600 employees - and it seems to take care of its employees very well. Example: to celebrate the company's 15 year anniversary, the co-founders flew everyone (around 500 employees at the time) to the Bahamas. !! For the 20 year anniversary, the destination was Disneyland. Craziness. They also have some other cute perks that usually only small, private companies offer: free breakfast on Wednesdays, free cookies on Friday afternoons, free coffee/tea/soda (I didn't think this was a "perk" until I started working in the world of government and their contractors and had to pay 40¢ per cup of coffee), and a on-site gym open 24 hours.

At the beginning of the day, with all the introductions, overviews, and HR interviews, it seemed like this would be a really neat place to work. I would get a lot of experience using the company's products as tech support personnel, and the other half of my time would be spent working on projects that would improve the software, create demos for customers, or create tools for a particular company's application.

I had my technical interview in the afternoon though, and that made my enthusiasm for this job wane a little. The interview lasted about two hours, and we covered the same types of material as in my phone interview: basic algebra/calculus, programming concepts, C programming, this company's software, and control theory. I already didn't feel like I did well over the phone, and this time everything was covered much more in-depth. After that part of the interview, I was mentally exhausted. All I wanted to do was lie down and close my eyes.

That wasn't the only thing that squashed my enthusiasm. At the end of the day, a couple of former members of the group that we all were interviewing for talked to us about the projects they've been working on since they left the group. Granted, their interests weren't along quite the same lines as mine, but I still wasn't overly excited about the types of things they were doing.

I went into this interview thinking it would be a really good experience for me because I haven't had any technical interviews before, even though I wasn't considering the company really seriously because of the location. But then when I learned more, it seemed like it would be a pretty neat place to work, so I was really trying to make it known that I was interested in their Washington, D.C. field office. But then as I learned even more, I'm feeling more like this job wouldn't be a great fit for me. Too much controls, too little aerospace.

I'm supposed to find out from them on Monday or Tuesday whether they want to make me an offer. I'm not very optimistic about my chances, and I'm not terribly excited about working there anymore, but I don't think either of those will make the rejection phone call any easier.

Resolutions

I started these before 2007 even showed up, but due to the family drama that's occurred over the past month, these seemed somewhat irrelevant compared to all that. More to come on "that" when I'm able to get my thoughts together.

It seems I'm supposed to summarize 2006 before I make resolutions. So:

2006 was the year of the eyeballs. Many ophthalmologist appointments, many ointments, allergy tests, eyedrops, tears, and frustration. I was hoping that 2006 would be the only year of the eyeballs, but so far that's not been the case. My new goal is to make it less than 12 months, but it seems a little silly to even set goals like that, seeing as there's a limited amount that I can do to influence things.

Anyway, I imagine you're all sick of hearing about this, so I'll move on. Josh and I took some great trips in 2006: Boston, Houston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Jacksonville, and Orlando, and I got to meet his wonderful family. I spent a week in England with Lauren. My mom and I took a trip to Cape Cod. I said goodbye to Phil, Glenn, June and our apartment in Back Bay and moved into a new apartment with LeeAnn. My brave little hamster who survived the road trip from Houston to Boston died. I spent the entire tax year earning income in only one state! This is the first time since 2000 that I'll only have to fill out one state tax return. I kept up my 2005 resolution to floss every day. I survived my first year of grad school.

So, looking forward, in 2007 I would like to:

1) Keep in touch with friends/family better. I say this every year, but in light of everything that's happening with my family, it seems more important now.

2) Graduate/get a job. This doesn't really feel like a true resolution because it's a goal that will hopefully be gone within the next six months; nevertheless, it's obviously a goal for now, so I'm including it here.

3) Do difficult/ugly things right away. Don't procrastinate! I have this awful habit of not reading uncomfortable emails, not listening to uncomfortable voicemails, and not responding or having a meeting when there's something I don't want to face. The problem is that the more time passes, the uglier/more uncomfortable it gets. I do better with measurable goals, so I'm giving myself a 24-hour turnaround time for these things, barring any extenuating circumstances.

4) Remember that except for life and death situations, nothing is as bad as it first seems. Sorry, I know it's cliché, but it really is something that I need to keep in mind. My mom has a good way of thinking about difficult stuff: ask yourself, "What's the worst that can happen? Is the outcome really that bad?" I feel as though the past two years have increased my overall bent-out-of-shape-ness about things, so I'm resolving to change my outlook and try to de-stress.

5) Go to bed earlier. My usual weeknight has me going to bed late, getting up late, getting to work late, getting home late, and repeating the cycle all over again. So, bedtime for 2007 is 11 pm.

Adiós, Laura

Tonight I tried to do some blog housekeeping. It didn't really work, except that I updated my reading list and deleted Laura's travel blog from the sidebar. "Deleted" seems like such a cruel word, so I thought I'd at least say something about it here rather that just wiping it.

Laura returned home from Spain about a month ago. From what I know, she had a fantastic time and achieved her ever-changing goal of fluency, although I think she was pretty happy to home. For one thing, she missed the peanut butter.

Blogging is a pretty cool thing. My older sister spent a year of college in Germany several years ago, and although it was wonderful to read her descriptions of places, people, and traditions, it was hard to imagine what it was really like until we actually got there to visit her. I never got a chance to visit Laura in Seville, but I liked getting to see a very teeny slice of her life there along with the words. So maybe it's the digital cameras that are pretty cool things.

Last month I had a phone interview with a company that makes engineering software. This company is to engineering software what Microsoft is to operating systems, although to my knowledge, this company has no direct competitor. So needless to say, I was floored to get a call from them and hear that they liked my resume.

That feeling lasted until about four weeks ago, which is when I actually had the phone interview. It was technical interview, which I'd never had before, but I've heard plenty of horror stories from friends and co-workers, so I'd determined that it's basically the pee-in-your-pants type of interview because typically one of the following two things occurs: either they ask you to derive some really advanced concept that you can't even pronouce, so you have to fess up and say that you have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, or worse, they ask you something completely fundamental and straight forward but you have an enormous brain fart and draw a complete blank on the answer. Either way, chances of you looking like an idiot are high.

Anyway, well before this interview, I was told what general topics we'd cover:

1. Basic math (algebra and calculus)
2. Computer programming concepts
3. One programming language (C, C++, or Java)
4. This company's own software/programming language
5. Signal processing or controls

When my interviewer called, he skipped all the usual chit chat at the beginning and got right down to business.

Question #1: "What is an even function?"
Me: %*&@!!! "Uh... um... Well, I know that cosine is an even function!"

And it just went downhill from there. I think that was the only "basic math" question that I really boned, but C programming didn't go swimmingly either. If he had asked me those questions this time two years ago, I would have been all over the answers about pointers, addresses, and #include files; however, since I've been programming exclusively NOT in C over the past two years, that section of my brain has since been overwritten. The only section that I didn't screw up was the one about this company's own software.

It was too bad, since after all the embarrassment, the guy answered some of my questions and it turns out that the job seems pretty neat. You could certainly spend the majority of your time coding if you wanted, but you could also work on demos for customers, go to trade shows, and lead training sessions for engineers in industry.

So you can imagine my surprise when I got a call back the next day saying that I passed the phone interview. All I could gather from this is that they're apparently looking for people who can a) operate a telephone, and b) not curse on said telephone when asked basic questions to which they don't know the answer. The next step is the on-site interview, which happens this Friday. And yes, there will be more technical questions. So yes, I will be studying!

Reading list

I got four books out of the library yesterday and I have just three weeks to read them. Any bets on how many times I'll have to get them renewed?


I picked this up while I was searching for a different book about Guantanamo, one whose title and author I couldn't remember. This one is written by an Army soldier, while the original one I was looking for is written by a prisoner. If I can find it, it'll be interesting to read after this one.


Josh and I started watching the Band of Brothers HBO miniseries over New Year's, and since I'm a staunch believer in the idea that the book is always better than the movie, I decided to check this out of the library too. And as reading leads to more reading, evidently Major Dick Winters has also written an account of his time in E Company, so that's on my list after I finish this one.


I don't get CNN and therefore don't know much about Anderson Cooper, except that he always shows up in photographs looking like he does on the cover of this book - "Hey guys, how about this face? Am I looking pensive enough? Concerned enough about the all the terrible tragedies happening in the world? Looks good, right? I've been practicing in front of the mirror." So far, this is the only one of the four that I've started, and the content is really interesting, but I'm already annoyed with the guy's use of adjectives and his inability to write in complete sentences. As if fragments better describe. His feelings of despair about the world. Especially during the tragedies of 2005.


I saw this on the New Books shelf and couldn't resist at least reading the book jacket. The gist is that the author gets dumped at the altar and demoted at work, so instead of sulking at home, he goes on his originally scheduled honeymoon (while cancelling the honeymoon suite for two rooms and "swapping the champagne for beer") with his brother instead. They like the trip so much that it motivates them to sell nearly everything they own and travel around the world.