The last week has been complete chaos, the culmination of a pretty chaotic semester.

I finished the paper I've been working on since this summer, submitted it. It will become the first experiment of my dissertation, and part of the data I collected will end up as the second experiment. If the paper is accepted by Nature, it will make finding a job significantly easier. If it's not accepted by Nature, I think it's got a pretty good shot at getting in somewhere, but that will mean rewriting it.

I found out I'll be teaching Learning again in the fall, which will be very nice.

The hard drive in my 4.5 year old powerbook gave up the ghost and started making grinding noises. Rather than replace the drive so that something else can break, I borrowed the money to purchase a new macbook, which will ideally get me to and through my next job. It's quite nice, but I do miss the aluminum and the compactness of the 12" powerbook. I'm about one program (Flash) away from recovering my functionality, and I didn't really lose any data.

Part of the house flooded again.

My right front brake has started make a crunching noise.

I'm going to avoid driving as much as possible for the next week or two, and then make an appointment. Here's hoping it's just a small brake issue and not something catastrophic.

The deadline for the paper I've been working on is approaching faster than anticipated. Yet I still can't make the words happen any faster. I've been trying to avoid my usual distractions, but fell into the usual trap of new (to me) webcomic to peruse, posting on lj, and making tea over and over again. The paper is so close I can taste it, and it's going to be good. Let's hope other people like it too.

I had a flood in my house last Friday, which was exciting. It involved myself and housemate Null digging trenches through snow, ice, and frozen ground so that the pouring rain had somewhere else to besides into our house. We had water in all three types of matter, it was exciting. At worst we had four inches or so of water in the garage and two or so in the finished part. All of the floors except the bedrooms are tile, so those dried quickly once we wet-vacced everything, and just this weekend we got new carpets in. I took the opportunity to rearrange my room and put up pictures, so my room feels much nicer.

CPAP is still working wonderfully. Prior to this, my afternoons would be spent in a sort of zombie state where I was incapable of higher functioning. The two days of talks I attended this past weekend, I ordinarily would have been unconscious for most of, which would have been disasterous, as I was the only thing making sure that the computers and projector were working and useable by ancient, brilliant psychologists. But I'm awake, I'm alert, and it's really quite exciting.

I've cut back a bit on the WoW, things have stabilized a bit as most everyone has hit 70. There's now the issue of trying to take the remnants of a forty man raiding guild and stuffing them into ten man groups. There's a tradeoff between balancing skill and still making sure we progress, but I think we've settled on path. We got our first 25 man raid boss down this weekend, and our ten mans are making serious inroads into Karazhan. The nerf to Druids was hotfixed at the last minute to do exactly what was needed, so I can keep playing in the style I've become accustomed to.

Enough procrastination for now, back to work.

I intended to try to post more here, but keep forgetting, or getting distracted, or otherwise failing to do so. Not too much has changed with me, but I'll try to hit the highlights.

Dissertation preparations are going well, current paper is shaping up nicely, and I'm really quite proud of the ideas at the core of it. It leads down a very appealing path, to a philosophical stance that is palatable to me, but capable of addressing issues of interest to a larger audience.

Burning Crusade came out, I play it far too much. Overall, the release and subesequent weeks were much much smoother than I imagined they would be. The social dynamics of the game have been largely turned on their head, and some people are adjusting better than others, so there's a good bit of drama. On the other hand, the new content is really well done, the instances are well designed, interesting, and robust enough to bear repetition.

Our attempts to get pho last night were thwarted. There are two Pho places nearby that we have so far failed to sample on several occasions, since both close at 8pm and are not open on Mondays. Last night, we went to Black Eyed Sally's, a bbq place of sorts. The ribs and chicken were okay, the sauces were fine, but everything was at least slightly off. It was like someone had gotten ahold of a southern cookbook, without ever having actually sampled the cuisine. The mashed sweet potatoes, for example, were defined by some sort of citrusy note, as were the collard greens. While interesting, and certainly fine if not being advertised as actual southern cooking, it just didn't add up, and I think everyone left the meal full, but somewhat unsatisfied. The red beans and rice were seperate entities, stewed beans on top of white rice, not a single, unified whole that you'd find in Lousiana or surrounds.

This afternoon, I, being the eternal optimist, tried pho and bao from a campus run cafe type thing that usually serves sandwiches and salads and the like. It was like someone had heard about the actual item, and then deliberately tried to make it as mediocre as possible. The pho had sliced roast beef in it. Like sandwich meat. The broth at least had anise in it, and it was topped with scallions. The bao were just awful. The filling was distinguishable from the breading only by texture. So now I would like to have a more authentic version of both of these things.

Today has been punctuated at thirty minute intervals by things that I need to do. It has made it very difficult to settle in and get work done.

I lost about a week somewhere. I don't know where it went. I don't know that if I had it back, I'd be able to do anything terribly productive with it, but it's still frustrating.

I got my CPAP two days ago. It's hard to say if it's made any difference just yet, since I've only used it these two nights. It's definitely going to take some getting used to, as I'm trying to sleep with something forcing air into my nose and held on by neoprene straps. I haven't had extraordinary problems getting to sleep, but it definitely takes a little longer than it did. I haven't woken up with a headache yet, however. We'll see what happens as I get more used to it.

I've been working on data analysis for a grant proposal which will also become the groundwork for another paper. I've also been trying to get the basis for my dissertation proposal done, but that writing hasn't been going very smoothly. I keep writing sentences, and consigning them to another text file as not quite right. I need to just get something coherent down so it can be finessed, rather than trying to get it right off the bat.

The last couple weeks were pretty uneventful, lots of shopping, staring at the computer screen, trying to get something written before I left for the holidays. Not much luck in that department, but I was moderately successful in getting all of my shopping done in a timely manner.

So I'm in Michigan again, and actually about to head back CT way. Christmas was pretty uneventful, some typical family stress, and way too many cookies. My mom makes these mushroom (shaped) meringue cookies that are awesome. They really look like mushrooms.

Apparently I missed all the fun at the homefront. One of my housemates is, in theory, dogsitting over the break. The owners of the dog brought it over to get used to our place the other day. Dog goes exploring. Dog finds my cat. Barks at cat. Cat, having grown up with overly friendly retrievers, swats at dog. Did I mention that this is a weiner dog and that the cat probably has a few pounds on it? Dog, now bleeding, runs back out of the room to its owners, who proceed to freak out, since their dog is bleeding. Oh, apparently one of my housemates faints at the sight of blood. Bam, on the floor. Dog gets cleaned off, has a scratch on the face and possibly eye and now has a cone to prevent it from scratching. Housemate is fine. Cat? He was back asleep before the dog was out of the room. Mushroom cookies are good, but can you really place a value on that kind of spectacle? Dog is fine, no permanent damage thus far.

Can't sleep, which isn't good. I think I may be drinking enough tea that the caffeine intake is effecting me. I hope not, but I cut back a bit today anyhow. The extended family descends tomorrow, so I'm going to need all the rest I can get.

I'm looking to help out a colleague who needs to compare a sequence of images, ideally getting a value of how similar each image is to the image that occured before it. Any thoughts?

I've fallen behind a bit. I came down with food poisoning on Monday night, or at least some form of gasterenteritis, almost certainly caused by food. I'm not sure if those are different things, or what falls under the umbrella of food poisoning, but suffice to say I was pretty miserable. Fortunately it passed pretty quickly, I was feeling much better by Wednesday night. Thursday I took unseleigh to Logan, but didn't get much time in Boston (basically enough to buy some cds at the closing Tower Records. Fyi, don't try to hide things in the dance section, we'll still find 'em there). Friday was working from home, Saturday was more of the same. Spent most of Sunday getting ready to leave on Monday, which was spent driving out here to Michigan, where my parents are now living. Drive was pretty uneventful, aside from unseleigh getting yelled at by a Brown's fan working at a rest area for her Steelers hoodie.

We're now chillin' at my parents new house, which is really interestingly laid out. It's got massive windows and decks on the side that overlooks the small river running through the backyard, and my mother, despite having been here only a month or two, has made a pretty significant impact on the landscaping. Good to have puppies around again, they absolutely love the place, since they have tons of room to run and play, and the possibility of swimming. Squishie will actually run through the electric fence to get to the water sometimes, but she's genetically predisposed to being wet. There's a nice loft space above the living room, which has a bar built in. The whole place is done in hardwoods and tile, and there's a massive fireplace that gives it a very cozy feeling. The kitchen is really the only thing not to love about the place, and that's mostly the size. It's basically a galley kitchen, which really doesn't cut it for the culinary endeavors my family tends to undertake.

Work has been going pretty well, the writing is trickling out, and now needs to be reshaped a bit. One of my goals for the trip I'm currently on is to get it into an essentially final shape. Not sure how much time I'll have to work, but I really should make time.

Ooops, forgot about my tea. I just found a tennis ball under the table, so I'm going to go make the dogs happy.

So I found these nifty little flash music videos today.

Marisa Stole my Precious Thing
Border of Death
Phantasmagoria Mystical Expectation

First thought was that if this is an anime I absolutely want to see it immediately. Turns out, it's not, which is sad. It's actually a side scrolling shooter, with witches and magic and stuff. Seems pretty nifty. It also has a massive fan following, doujin community, even conventions dedicated to the doujins alone. The Wikipedia page is pretty informative.

Something I ate does not agree with me. We are in a fight.

I worked from home today. Usually, this means "played Warcraft on and off all day", but I haven't even turned the gaming machine on. I spent the morning helping clean out the garage, and in relatively short order, I should be able to park my car there, which will free up more parking space in general, as well as make my car happier in the winter mornings to come. The dining room turns out to be a pretty good place to work. Natural light, plenty of room to spread out, easy access to tea and oreos. I have been accompanied by a bearded dragon, who is home for a week of in-service days, and a pug, who is apparently leaving us later this evening (though my current plan is to turn off the lights and pretend we're not home when the person comes to get him). The pug is kinda cute, in that weird alien baby kinda way. He doesn't have the same expressiveness as the kind of dogs that I'm used to, but he's actually similar to yellow dog in his need to be near people. He sort of orbits around whoever is around, doing periodic checks to see if any food has magically appeared anywhere. Other than that, he's been curled up at me feet, which is pretty endearing. The lizard? I asked the lizard about fractal geometry just to watch him blink.

I am losing faith in the peer review process. I read papers which have glaring lack of clarity in crucial places, and wonder to myself, how did a reviewer read this and think, "this lack of detail is nice! Very confusing." My fear is that if a reviewer doesn't really understand what's going on, and doesn't want to admit it, they'll okay it out of fear of their own inadequecies being exposed. This has led to a bad situation, wherein I tell my advisor that the writing I have isn't good enough, and he says, "that's for the reviewers to decide" and I say "the reviewers wouldn't know good writing if it devoured their souls!" and then he looks at me like I'm crazy(er).

One of my earliest memories is going to the polls with my Dad at age 5. The voting machines were these huge, fridge sized monstrosities, with a giant lever that you would pull when you had pushed all the levers. It made this enormous KACHUNK when you pulled it. When I became old enough to vote, they still had these machines here in Storrs, and my first time voting was using one of them. That KACHUNK noise was very satisfying. I'm telling you all this because they have replaced the monstrosities of democracy with scantrons. This is the way democracy functions, not with a KACHUNK but with a whir.

At first I thought they were electronic voting machines, which are apparently being tested in several CT voting districts. Still not comfortable with the idea, though my housemate assures me that CT is using the best of the worst.

The other night, amidst Indian pastries, we were discussing that as children, we are implcitily taught that voting is pointless. In school, when you vote for a class president, or other such nonsense, it's just that. Nonsense. The office has no meaning, no ability to effect you, and thus you are taught that voting has no impact except for popularity indices. There was another thing, about pizza, but I forgot it in determining that Steph and I should probably be teaching Metaphor Theory, and that it should be a bonified major.

I just watched a couple episodes of Azumanga Daioh, possibly the most adorable manga ever created. It's very soothing. This viewing I found myself imagining the characters as they would be written by Murakami. The really disturbing thing is that for most of them, it's really not too much of a stretch to imagine.

Breakfast for dinner tonight. I'm making pumpkin waffles.

So there was a massive halloween party at my house last night. It was mostly my sister's friends and friends of friends and so on, yea, unto many generations. The few of my friends that came were more or less under control, with a notable exception. Things were pretty cool until it got a bit late, and the ratio of immediate friends to tangential friends decreased.

Kuba and I left early and crashed with Steph, which seemed wise given that things were still pretty raucous when we left, and the beginnings of problem cleanup were starting. Having gone to get sushi, hit the mall, and watched the Steelers lose to the goddamned Raiders, I am now returned. Kuba has gone back to the Cape, but he should be back soon enough.

Apparently my kitty, who I thought had left the house before the party, was in my room the whole time. He had food, but he was pretty traumatized by the noise, I think. He's had some canned food and seems happier.

The house, not so much. The entire downstairs and most of the upstairs smells, mostly like stale beer, but with a touch of vomit in places. I have promises that more mopping and cleaning will occur, but I am loathe to put my couch and the like back until it's done. It's a bit cold, but we may have to air the place out. Well, by we, I mean those responsible for the party.

I love my new Fleuvog boots. They stopped making this style, so I got them for about half price, and I love them. They're very comfortable, they have a very distinctive look, and the sole is different than most of my shoes/boots. It's more traditionally bootlike, I guess. It makes a satisfying noise if I want it to. I haven't watched my feet when I walk this much since I got my first pair of green converse way back when.

Steep Tea is getting bought by someone. I only know this because I am currently steeping my last bag of Corduroy Hips, which not only has an absolutely fantastic name with fanastic imagery, but is also amazingly tasty green tea with vanilla and caramel. They also apparently make a spicy cocoa in addition to their fabulous moogdrenk cocoa. All of these things are on sale, too. Which makes it okay. Steph got some white tea with cranberries and the like in it. Because it sounds delicious and is called Coma White.

I had my first soda at the movie theater the other day in about two months. I wasn't impressed. I don't think I'll drink soda anymore, unless it is Dr. Pepper with the real cane sugar in it.

I started reading a collection of short stories selected and edited by Murakami, called Birthday Stories. So far, good, dark, short stories. Hopefully it will inspire my writing a bit, which is coming, albeit haltingly. Needs to be faster and more consistent.

Today there's a bonus hour of talks at our weekly seminar. I am not excited about this.

So I didn't get a message from the sleep center until last night. I'm not sure when it actually arrived, but "couple of days" was the time frame one of my housemates indicated. They had an opening. They filled it before I got the message. I get to wait another month before I actually get the possibility of uninterrupted sleep. Incredibly annoyed.

Last two sets of subjects have had only one of the two show up. This means I have to give the one who did show up credits for nothing, and don't get to run them. The closer we get to fall break, the less useful the subjects tend to be, since they're doing it for course credit. So toward the beginning of the semester you get the people who are interested in the field and the eager beavers, and towards the end of the semester you get the people who are just doing it so they can pass the class, and the people who didn't realize they had to do it. People who just want to get it over with and have no interest in the task whatsoever.

I managed to solve, or at least temporarily fend off my computer issues. I finally got the motherboard to halt before bios and give me a beep code, which was one long and two short, video issue. Since I'd replaced the video card with an identical working card and had the same issues, I'm pretty sure the issue was with the agp port/processing/whathaveyou on the motherboard. The motherboard I swapped in had an identical chipset, so I figured everything would be fine. Turns out, not so much. I didn't have to reinstall, just ran a repair, and after some mucking about with directx, was up and running again. Seems to be working, knock on wood.

I don't know if I mentioned the couch in our office, but it has been named. I suspect Steph's hand in it. It is the Couch of Reason. It is where people come to find solace from the insanity that reigns outside, on the rest of the third floor. It is also for napping.

I forgot my ginormous peanut butter cookie at home, but remembered to snag some brownies. I don't know how I feel about this. I meant to try a roasted mushroom soup recipe I heard, but forgot. I need to get thanksgivingy stuff for tomorrow, maybe I'll get mushroom soup ingredients while I'm at it. I think I'm going to sissy out on the gravy. And the stuffing. Time constraints, y'know.

My shoulders/neck hurt like my pillow no longer has the required firmness. It could be from sweeping the driveway, though.

Debating how many pairs I want to run this week. The new condition is at 40% useable data, which probably means I should crank up the number of experimental runs.

Oh, I went to the symphony the other night with Leona. Good fun. It was interesting on a lot of levels. Is the number of particular instruments a function of those instruments native volume? There's a bunch of research to be done at the symphony, in terms of coordination dynamics, communication, and probably learning theory as well.

I need to write, write writewritewritewrite.

So my pc boxen has been shutting down intermittantly. By shutting down, I mean that the monitor will act as though it is changing modes, then go into sleep mode. The computer seems to be running, but doesn't accept input, and is actually halted, though occasionally the sound will continue for a while. I have to shut it down manually, and restart it.

It hadn't happened for about three weeks, now it's back, and happening quickly. I'm pretty sure it's hardware, since one of the times it happened recently, as I was restarting, it just refused to start. It would start to power up, then fail. No beep. This suggests to me it's either motherboard or powersupply. I have an identical motherboard that I'm going to try in a bit here, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me definitively before I start switching processors around.

I have been sick. I think I am on the path to recovery, however. Night before last and yesterday were pretty horrendous, I felt like my head was going to explode and cover the entire room with goop. And the cold. Couldn't get warm for the life of me. I drank water constantly, took several hot hot showers, and last night at some point I realized I was hot under all the blankets. I'm still a bit congested, and there's a bit of pressure, but it isn't the tectonic level it was yesterday. I sound worse then I did yesterday, but coughing is productive (ewww), I hear.

Too much to do, not enough time, still not sleeping. People need to cancel their sleep studies so I can get my damn machine.

Data to parse, analysis to run, other analysis to rerun, writing to be done on three different fronts. I wonder if playing the sick card to catch up on work will result in karmic repercussions.

It feels like the day is zooming past me in slow motion. I don't know if it's because I'm ill and possibly feverish, but I don't feel as bad and my throat doesn't really hurt anymore, so it may just be how it is. I really hope there's a cancellation so I can get my sleep study done. Knowing why I feel constantly dazed and tired and headachy, and knowing that a solution exists that just needs to be configured makes me angry.

The macncheese I made last night was definitely one of my best efforts ever. The texture was just right, and I did some ad hoc measurements so I should be able to replicate it. I made some with ham and broccoli and some without, and I used mostly sharp cheese and a bit of meunster. I think next time I will mix the cheeses up a bit more and use a bit sharper cheddar. I think in the past I have added the cream too quickly.

At some point in the last 24 hours I did something to my left arm. I thought it was my shoulder, but after careful inspection and testing, it seems it is the bicep/tricep muscle area. Certain extensions and flexions are excruciating. I don't know what I did. I moved a small desk awkardly, but it didn't hurt until hours afterward. The only thing I can think of was whisking the cheese sauce. There was no immediacy there either, though. It started when I was sitting at the table listening to Dave rant about parking in Boston. Maybe the sheer force of Dave's anger messed up my arm. It's possible.

I'm going to proctor an exam in a bit here, which is pretty boring. Then more writing. We are at a standstill, I think "from scratch" sounds too informal, my collaborator thinks that "ex nihilo" sounds too formal. Anything in between? The other problem is a bit deeper, in that our first sentence seems inextricably awkward. Either it sounds weird or it has two "of" bits. The "a method that allows the experimental study of the emergence of stuff" vs. "a method that allows studying experimentally the emergence of stuff".

Got up this morning and went into the department, despite feeling like ass. Only had one subject signed up, which meant no experiment, and then that one subject showed up half an hour late. So at least I didn't have to give them the 2 hours of credit for nothing.

I have a tickle in my throat, and people are apparently coming down with strep. This makes me a sad panda.

I am taking precautionary measures, and making chicken stock for chicken noodle soup as I type this. Macncheese for Tuesday night dinner, since I was shopping anyhow. And now the whole house smells like chicken soup. Mission accomplished.

So we have an automated system to make use of the undergrad psychology students as subjects. The number of credits they get for participating is time standardized, and they're required to do some number of credits, with additional credits for extra credit. One of the nice things is that there's a nice sign up system, and students who don't show up get locked out of the system (and may thus be unable to make the course requirements and thus have to write some hideously long research paper instead). One of the down sides is that if you forget to assign the credits, it cancels all your future experiment sessions. Since I thought I'd assigned the credits after the last experiment, I came in nice and early for today's sessions. Turns out I didn't assign the credits for the last session, so I have no subjects today. This is bad because it means I have to run twice as many next week. Not a complete loss, because I have a crazy amount of writing to get done as soon as possible, and I wanted to try having sessions on different days anyhow.

Overbrewed my tea. Oh well.

Note to self, don't forget Dave's cats this weekend.