Things Other than Sweden

I've done a couple of other things in addition to obsessing about Sweden since I got home last week.

First of all, I've scheduled my visit to Oak Ridge for June 13-14. They only want me for a day. I'll leave here on Monday the 13th, spend the night somewhere near the lab, and have a day of interviews on the 14th. I'm not quite sure about the travel arrangements yet, but I hope they will be able to get me back home on the 14th. I'd prefer to be gone for as little as possible.

When I came home I found an e-mail from my former boss's boss at NCSA. He's now at Purdue doing a comparable job. It seems that Purdue is trying to become a major player in the HPC world, and they've been actively recruiting people from NCSA. He's the third person I can think of who now works there. Anyhow, he said he has a position to fill at Purdue and wanted to interview me for it. He's still working on the logistics of it, because I would be his first interviewee over there and he doesn't know how the bureaucracy works yet.

And then on Monday the guy from Los Alamos called me back, and said they'd like to have me out there for an interview. Those arrangements have not been made yet, but I think it would be nice if I could squeeze it in at the end of the week I go to Oak Ridge. That may not be possible, though, and in that case it would have to wait until the very end of June, after my defense.

It feels good to be wanted for all these interviews, but what will feel even better is to be wanted for one or more jobs as a result of all these interviews. With the meager knowledge I have right now, if all these interviews converted into jobs, I would say the partial ordering of my preferences would go as follows: IBM > Oak Ridge > Purdue > Los Alamos.

Jeff has been keeping busy too. He's started cleaning the house and fixing up the yard in preparation for our moving. When I gave him the idea of getting a dumpster from the trash company, he got really excited about cleaning our property. The dumpster came yesterday at about noon and he had it full by the time I left for karate. He had them empty it today and paid for them to haul off the next load. I suspect that he will have it filled up by the time I get home today.

I am a slob, and he came from a family of packrats, so we are destined to collect clutter. He said he found some really bizarre things that he had saved, such as used brake pads from a car we no longer had when we bought our house, and it felt liberating to throw them all out. Our garage is clean now, thanks to his efforts. Next on the list are the basement and the rest of the house.

He also cut down a whole bunch of volunteer trees and fixed the fence on the side of the house. Last night he was exhausted but happy. I am impressed by how much he has done.

And in other news, I got the rental of the lake house at the park for my party. So I am really happy about that. I went and paid for it this morning.

I've been going over my thesis with a fine-toothed comb, looking for minor errors to correct. I found a place where I had two ares in a row, and a place where I had forgotten the absolute value sign, amongst other things. I think that all my open parentheses have closes to match, and that sort of thing, so I should be okay. The only thing that remains is to put my final scalability analysis in there, and then get my advisor to go over it one more time with his vicious red pen. I hope to be able to give the final draft to the committee by Friday, June 3.

It's so weird to be doing this. I can hardly believe that I'm almost done. After this, I will probably never be a student again. I can't fathom what life will be like if it doesn't center on school.