Adventures in My Really Boring Life

Yesterday we worked in the yard for several hours. We're about halfway done with the stuff we're doing in the front yard. That means that the landscaped part of the yard, with the roses and holly bushes, is about halfway weeded and covered with weed control fabric. The second half is going to be harder than the first, because it's overgrown with grass, and grass is very pesky stuff. I got some killer attack plant killing nasty chemical, which seems like cheating in some ways (also cruel and unusual punishment for plants), but desperate times call for desperate measures. I'd really like the front yard to look nice, because first impressions help sell a house, and it won't look very nice if the landscaping is overgrown.

We worked outside for about 4 hours. Today, I have a tickle in my lungs, just like I did the last time, which led to a nasty case of bronchitis. If I get bronchitis again, I will have to hit myself over the head really hard as punishment, because if it progresses as it did this last time, I will have a head full of congestion as I'm about to get on an airplane. Hopefully my immune system isn't as wussy as it was the last time I did yard work. We need to finish up the front yard before Memorial Day weekend, when my Dad and his wife are planning for a visit. We just want to be able to say, "See all the work that we did?" because when they come, they will do a whole bunch of housework for us. They are a whirlwind of energy, my dad in particular. This work that has taken two of us eight hours to do, he would have done in half a day. I don't know how people work that fast, but there we are. My dad is an amazing guy.

In other news, I'm just about done with everything. My parallel implementation of diffusion on the 3-D objective function is running as I write this. All I need to do is run the program three times each for 8, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 96, and 128 processors. That could take a long time, or it could take little time. I just need to pack the queue as much as I can without getting a nasty note from the admins. Then I just make some pretty graphs, evaluate the performance of my method, write it up, and voila! a thesis is done!

I can hardly believe that I am just about done with my Ph.D. I have been here for so long, I never thought I'd be able to leave. It makes me quite happy to be finishing up! Of course, in order to actually leave, I need someplace to go, which means getting a job. But I feel pretty optimistic about that at the moment. If nothing else, there must be plenty of folks who need a good numerical analyst, and there's gotta be one who's desperate enough to hire me.