Archive for March, 2006

On Grad School Visits and Research

Published
by
Nicole
on 3/16/2006
in Journal
. 3 Comments

I have not utterly forgotten that I promised to report on my trip to Cornell. In fact, I spent most of my (copious) airport/airplane time today writing about just that. I’m pretty sure that some of the people on the flight thought I was cracked because I only paused to rip pages out of my notebook and turn them over to write on the back. I have a lot to say on the topic of that visit, though, and I’m not entirely certain that I want to post it all publicly. So, for anyone who has more than just a glancing interest in how my visit went–and this includes the lowdown on Bill Nye, people–leave a comment here using a proper e-mail address (which won’t be displayed to anyone but me) and I’ll put together a nice long e-mail message with all the details. Alternatively, if there’s really only one aspect of the weekend that you’re interested in hearing about–like which professors I want to work with or something like that–you can specify that in the comment and I’ll tailor what I send to your interests.

It’s possible that, at some point, I’ll go ahead and post everything here, but that’s entirely unforeseen right now. I’m still debating on whether to place an edited version here, actually. Thoughts?

In other graduate school news, I’m currently writing from Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the eve of what appears to be my final graduate school visit. I got word from Notre Dame yesterday that they’ve accepted me but have no financial aid offer. Tonight, amidst bad news, I got word from Duke that I’ve been officially accepted there and that my financial offer is in the mail (ha ha ha!). I was kind of starting to wonder if they’d decided not to accept me after all.

I haven’t said much about life outside of graduate school visits recently, perhaps because that stuff probably isn’t of much interest to anyone. This week was my final Spring Break, though, and I suppose that should earn it at least a footnote in this on-going chronicle of my life. I spent all of Monday and Wednesday working in the lab, feverishly denting my head against concrete walls. Well, I should back up. My research is actually (finally) going well. My equipment works. It’s possible to take data from both the software and hardware perspective. Most of my troubles this week were in trying to make sense of my data, and a trip to see my advisor helped a lot with that. Since it’s a slower week than normal for him, we spent about an hour in his office going through things together in Excel and discussing what it all meant before I headed back to my hovel to program the same type of analysis into MATLAB. I quite enjoyed just getting to work one-on-one with him for an extended period of time again; it feels like forever since that’s happened. At one point I brought up Cornell and some of the stuff I saw there and how excited I was at the prospect of working on some of these problems. And, though he was clearly happy for me, there was also something genuinely sad in his manner as he told me that I would have to be sure to let him know what I ended up doing. I don’t know if he was sad that I’m leaving, or if he’s sad that he won’t be working on those problems, or if it was something else entirely, but it definitely struck me as uncharacteristic for him.

Update From New York

Published
by
Nicole
on 3/11/2006
in Asides and memorable
. 2 Comments

Ithaca and Cornell are absolutely fantastic, and I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about them at some point, but I am dead exhausted right now. Too many days of being up late, rising early, and running around from dawn until dusk. I have to be up at 4 a.m. tomorrow to catch my flights back to Cleveland, so I want to get to bed and get some rest once I shower and pack. All the same, I wanted to let everyone know: this is it.

Irony at 6:30 a.m.?

Published
by
Nicole
on 3/9/2006
in Journal
. 0 Comments

The radio offerings here in Cleveland are pretty meager, which is probably why I’ve never really bothered to find a station and listen to it with any regularity. I hate waking up to beeping, though, so my alarm clock is set to play the radio. Even so, it’s rare for me to wake up to a song, and even rarer for it to be one that I know. So what should I hear at 6:30 a.m.?

It’s a death row pardon, two minutes too late
And isn’t it ironic… don’t you think?
It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you already paid…

Once upon a high school English class, I seem to recall discussing said lyrics during a poetry unit. I was good friends with that English teacher, and I owe a lot of what I’ve done since age fourteen to her. The last couple weeks have been peppered with moments when I keep thinking, “I should really e-mail So-and-So and let them know what I’m up to.” My guess is that coming close to milestones like finishing undergrad tend to remind people of those things that they’ve been meaning to do but haven’t.

And, oh, yes, it’s ironic. Where’s that e-mail address?

Musical Smatterings

Published
by
Nicole
on 3/7/2006
in Journal
. 2 Comments

I may be a bit late jumping on the boat with some of this, but I have some music-related links to share.

  • Vicar St. Tracks on Archive.org - These are several tracks from the 6 February 2006 Vicar St. gig the Frames did. They’re official recordings (mastered by Rob and everything), and I haven’t had a chance to listen to them yet, but comments from others have indicated that they’re absolutely fantastic. I personally can’t wait to listen to “Seven Day Mile,” but that may be my love affair with that song speaking.
  • Frames Podcast - This Paste Magazine podcast includes an interview with Glen and Joe from the Austin City Limits Festival last year. The podcast has more than just the Frames, actually, but it’s all worth the listen. The last two songs may not fly with everyone, but that’s typically the way indie music goes. (Why do I feel like someone out of QC suddenly?)
  • Josh Ritter Podcast (Parts One and Two) - Anyone who enjoys Ritter and his music will enjoy hearing this. The audio is a bit spotty in places, which is probably because it was recorded in Ritter’s home rather than in a studio, but the live tracks are quite good. I think I’ll be picking a couple of them out in mp3 format for my own use. As an aside, Josh will be back in Cleveland on April 19th, and I’m putting together a group to go see him. Anyone interested?

I may have to start listening to these Paste Magazine podcasts. If the Frames and Josh Ritter are the sort of artists they cover, I might enjoy listening to more of their repertoire. And heaven knows that these things make those long walks across campus and the half-days of airport traveling a little more bearable.

Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting

Published
by
Nicole
on 3/6/2006
in Journal
. 3 Comments

It’s a Monday, and, believe it or not, I’m feeling pretty good about it. (Sadly, others are not feeling so good about it.) But then, I had a pleasant weekend with homework that took much less time than normal, some writing, and a Saturday night that was downright kick-ass. Succumbing to the ultimate in geekish desires, my suitemates and I, along with a friend who lives down the hall, sallied forth Saturday evening and took over the Virtual Worlds Lab. Photos of the lab don’t seem to have materialized, sadly, so I will just have to describe it to you.

We went to the VWL with the sole purpose of using the console room, a long darkened room, one wall of which is a projector screen. Now, I may be slightly off on the hardware here, but the room contains something like: 4 high definition X-Boxes, 3-4 Playstation 2’s, 2 Gamecubes, and 3 digital projectors along with appropriate audio equipment to make the experience just that much more awesome. (Yes, I have become one of those geeks. It’s simply unfair to true gamers to actually call myself a gamer, but our suite does now own an X-box and several games for it.) Needless to say, playing any game in the console room is a lot more fun than playing it on our TV in the suite.

We fired up all three projectors and had two X-boxes and one PS2 running. The games of the evening? Halo 2, Burnout 3, Grand Theft Auto 3, and Soul Calibur 3. The first two I play fairly often at home. I only had a chance to watch Burnout 3, but Mark and I played a bit of Halo 2 on co-op, and that was great. It was very nice to have a set-up where both of us could easily see what was going on. Even on a fairly large TV like the one we have in the suite, it gets difficult to see when the screen gets subdivided.

It was my first time to play Soul Calibur 3, which is pretty much an arcade-style fighting game (i.e. Mortal Kombat with massive graphics advances). Christian gave me a quick primer on how to play and then proceeded to crush me utterly. Mark and I were better matched for each other, but the real entertainment of the evening was when Jessica and I got started on one another. Our mottos: “Buttonmash them to death!” We gave up on that when our hands started hurting. The PS2’s gamepad is really too small for me to hold comfortably for more than a quarter hour or so. That’s what I get for having huge hands, I guess.

All in all, it was a fun party. It’s not something that I’d want to do every weekend, but it was definitely worth it.

In the other reasons to be happy category: the weather is decently warm here; I visit Cornell later this week (!!!); I will definitely get to meet Bill Nye at Cornell; I have no midterms this week; Jon Stewart made the Oscars hilarious; and this is the first time all semester that I’ve had a fluids assignment finished before the night before it’s due. All that’s left is printing out the graph I made. Yes, this is a good Monday.

Photos from UVa

Published
by
Nicole
on 3/6/2006
in Journal
. 0 Comments

The Lawn at UVa

I finally got the photos from UVa uploaded. The campus is lovely, and the afternoon I spent taking photos was truly gorgeous, especially considering that it was February. Also, don’t miss the self-portrait hiding amongst them.

E.T.A. If you came across this entry looking very different (say, very empty?) earlier, that’s because I seem to be having database hiccups again. I’m very annoyed. But it has reminded me to go and back-up my February and March entries. I have to get into the habit of doing so regularly. Also, the site layout is doing weird things on me. Is anyone else noticing a lack of sidebar? I really don’t need this headache at the moment.