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Published On: Dec 09, 2003 10:43 AM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Dec 09, 2003 10:43 AM
Night of the Panther, Masters Stuff, Housekeeping etc.
Tonight I think I'm going to visit my friend
Lee
Beth at the
Glendale Apple
Store for the
Night of the
Panther .
A quite housekeeping note. I trimmed the September log
material off this page (it was getting huge) and gave it an archive like (see
the bottom of this page). If you would like a cleaner page to read, note that
I'm currently keeping my journal on two different systems: the (manually typed)
homepage and one generated by that iBlog product I'd been talking
about earlier. I'm a bit hesitant to move the entire thing permanently onto
iBlog because I'm not sure how well it scales and I don't like the idea of my
data being held hostage in a proprietary format. (I'm just funny that way.) I'll
probably keep using the iBlog version for a while, so if you're one of the
people who visits here periodically (both of them) you might decide to bookmark
the other page if you consider it more readable, aesthetically pleasing
etc.
Tonight I think I'm going to visit my friend Lee Beth at the Glendale Apple Store for the Night of the Panther . Lee Beth's a funny one. She doesn't really need the job at the Apple store, but she loves the Mac products, it gives her some side money, and she just seems to have fun doing it. Lee Beth is not a very logically-driven person. She kind of turns life into a fun adventure and romps around doing whatever seems like fun. It gives her a certain charm. She's definitely a trip. Anyway, I've been waiting for the release of the new Mac OS X operating system since Steve Jobs demoed all the cool features in his Apple Developers Conference keynote address.
I've got to say, Steve Jobs is a wonder to watch. Next time there's a big Apple conference, watch his keynote on a streaming Quicktime feed. (They invariably make it available after the live keynote is finished.) He can make the computing world fresh and exciting. Seeing the demos of Panther and (a year before) Jaguar I got so jazzed up. I hear that comparatively Bill Gates is a bit snoozer. Then again, what has MS released recently that's worth saying "Wow! Cool!"?
The final masters paper is proceeding well. (I want to call it a thesis, but it is not—thank goodness—a thesis. A thesis entails having the number of hoops you jump through triple. In my mind it's a big trial-by-fire hazing ritual for entry into life in academia.) Yesterday I couldn't type because my hands, wrists and shoulder were in real pain (oooh, good reminder, hang on while I pop an Excedrin!) so I read three related papers my brother Mike had authored, made notes and allowed everything to coalesce in my brain. It's frustrating because there are so many loose ends in the research, plus after five years of distance I now have a much better understanding on how things should proceed... but they aren't going to proceed because I'm no longer working on the project, just summarizing my past involvement.
It was cool reading Mike's papers. He's really becoming a good writer. You see, for those of you who've never read a scientific paper before, they can read like phonebooks. Actually, they can make a phone book sound like poetry. Mathematical concepts just don't translate to English easily, so writing a smooth paper that the reader's brain can digest naturally, well, that's an art that deserves a lot of credit. I'm really proud of my brother for doing it well.
(For those of you who don't know, Mike and I went through the Statistics graduate program at the same time. He was working for the USDA Forest Service at the time and help find me a graduate research assistantship through his same department so for a couple years we were both working together and taking the same classes together. It was really fun showing up to class as "the Williams brothers" and it was a wonderful way to get to know him far better than I had ever been able to during our childhood.)
In other news, the beaurocratic end of the masters degree is proceeding. I've had some major challenges (missed paperwork deadlines that were completely my fault, all of my committee members being on sabbatical, etc.) and in fact there had been a small chance that my procrastination could have taken me past the point of no return. It looks like things are getting back on track, and I will indeed be able to graduate. Credit should go to those people back in the Statistics Department who are putting up with my bulls%@t and helping me get this whole thing resolved. Frankly, I don't think I really deserve their patience and forgiveness. Time to get this damn thing finished!
Tonight I think I'm going to visit my friend Lee Beth at the Glendale Apple Store for the Night of the Panther . Lee Beth's a funny one. She doesn't really need the job at the Apple store, but she loves the Mac products, it gives her some side money, and she just seems to have fun doing it. Lee Beth is not a very logically-driven person. She kind of turns life into a fun adventure and romps around doing whatever seems like fun. It gives her a certain charm. She's definitely a trip. Anyway, I've been waiting for the release of the new Mac OS X operating system since Steve Jobs demoed all the cool features in his Apple Developers Conference keynote address.
I've got to say, Steve Jobs is a wonder to watch. Next time there's a big Apple conference, watch his keynote on a streaming Quicktime feed. (They invariably make it available after the live keynote is finished.) He can make the computing world fresh and exciting. Seeing the demos of Panther and (a year before) Jaguar I got so jazzed up. I hear that comparatively Bill Gates is a bit snoozer. Then again, what has MS released recently that's worth saying "Wow! Cool!"?
The final masters paper is proceeding well. (I want to call it a thesis, but it is not—thank goodness—a thesis. A thesis entails having the number of hoops you jump through triple. In my mind it's a big trial-by-fire hazing ritual for entry into life in academia.) Yesterday I couldn't type because my hands, wrists and shoulder were in real pain (oooh, good reminder, hang on while I pop an Excedrin!) so I read three related papers my brother Mike had authored, made notes and allowed everything to coalesce in my brain. It's frustrating because there are so many loose ends in the research, plus after five years of distance I now have a much better understanding on how things should proceed... but they aren't going to proceed because I'm no longer working on the project, just summarizing my past involvement.
It was cool reading Mike's papers. He's really becoming a good writer. You see, for those of you who've never read a scientific paper before, they can read like phonebooks. Actually, they can make a phone book sound like poetry. Mathematical concepts just don't translate to English easily, so writing a smooth paper that the reader's brain can digest naturally, well, that's an art that deserves a lot of credit. I'm really proud of my brother for doing it well.
(For those of you who don't know, Mike and I went through the Statistics graduate program at the same time. He was working for the USDA Forest Service at the time and help find me a graduate research assistantship through his same department so for a couple years we were both working together and taking the same classes together. It was really fun showing up to class as "the Williams brothers" and it was a wonderful way to get to know him far better than I had ever been able to during our childhood.)
In other news, the beaurocratic end of the masters degree is proceeding. I've had some major challenges (missed paperwork deadlines that were completely my fault, all of my committee members being on sabbatical, etc.) and in fact there had been a small chance that my procrastination could have taken me past the point of no return. It looks like things are getting back on track, and I will indeed be able to graduate. Credit should go to those people back in the Statistics Department who are putting up with my bulls%@t and helping me get this whole thing resolved. Frankly, I don't think I really deserve their patience and forgiveness. Time to get this damn thing finished!
Posted: Fri - October 24, 2003 at 10:51 AM