Adventures in Applied Math

Inquiring Minds Need to Know: Thomas the Tank Engine Edition

2012-01-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

Some things that are particularly disturbing about the world of Thomas the Tank Engine:

Am I the only person who noticed the fact that "Sodor" and "Mordor" sound very similar?
And that Sir Topham Hatt always has his eye on the trains?
The virtue on Sodor is "being useful," while the biggest vice is "causing confusion and delay." Apparently, verbally abusing trains is A-OK.
Am I the only person who thinks that sometimes, the trains should just tell Sir Topham Hatt to shove it?
With all the accidents that happen in just about every episode, how has Sir Topham Hatt's license to operate the railroads not yet been revoked?
What exactly is the role of the train driver? The trains seem to make all the big decisions. Why do the drivers not put their foot down when the trains are being reckless?
Am I the only person who abhors the classism inherent in Sodor society? The trains aspire to be "really useful" and bicker amongst each other to get the "most important" of the menial tasks Sir Topham Hatt throws at them. Mr. Perkins, the engine driver who is featured between stories, has a working-class British accent and is sickeningly deferential when Sir Topham Hatt calls on the phone. (And don't even get me started on the exotic "oriental" train, Hiro!) Everyone has their place in society and there is no mobility.
Speaking of accents, why does the obviously American narrator of the story pronounce "Thomas" in the British way? And I also find it hilarious when he says these typically British phrases (e.g. "Sir Topham Hatt was very cross!") with an American accent.
Sir Topham Hatt's brother Sir Lowham Hatt was in one episode, and caused the dreaded "confusion and delay." This helped me hate Sir Topham Hatt a little less, and understand why he turned out the way he did, given a childhood spent with this ne'er-do-well. Still, it does not excuse the way he behaves towards the trains. But more importantly, how did some useless nobody like Sir Lowham Hatt become a "Sir"? Clearly he inherited the title, which furthers the case against royalism.
When will my child finally outgrow this horrible show?

Important Milestone

2012-01-16T16:43:00.000-05:00

Today, Vinny lost a tooth for the first time! The permanent tooth had pushed it forward in his mouth until it was very precariously perched in his mouth. He wiggled and wiggled the tooth until finally it came out.

The neighboring tooth is starting to be pushed out in the same way by its corresponding permanent tooth. Coincidentally, he has a dentist appointment tomorrow. It will be interesting to hear what the dentist has to say!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T12:25:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year to my vast readership!

My work situation is not yet resolved, but that doesn't mean I can't write about other things!

We had a great holiday. We got a chance to see the whole family on both sides. First we visited my dad and stepmom, and saw my sisters and their families and my bonus siblings and their families as well. Then we went to visit Jeff's parents, and got a chance to see his siblings and their families, and spend some extra time with his nephews.

Vinny got a lot of great presents. The highlight to him was a portable washing machine that Santa brought for him. It is a small, hand-cranked washing machine that is basically a giant salad spinner. The moment he saw it, he lost all interest in opening his stocking or playing with anything else. He pretended to wash a lot of things, but it wasn't until yesterday that he and I actually used it to wash a few of his clothes. It worked amazingly well!

In other news, I had long been annoyed by the hideously ugly wallpaper in the master bathroom at our house, especially because it was halfway peeling off the walls. So I decided to solve that problem by removing the wallpaper. Once I began peeling the wallpaper off, it was really hard to stop. I was late to work on Friday because I couldn't stop peeling the wallpaper. The wallpaper is mostly gone, but even halfway done it is an improvement. The problem is that the bathtub and tile in the bathroom is a hideous dusty rose color from the 60's. It's on the orange side of pink -- kind of like this. It is the equivalent of that 70's avocado color, only pink. My plan is to paint the walls a neutral color that will not clash with the dusty rose. After this project is finished, I'm going to replace the hideous peeling vinyl floor in there.

Decisions, Decisions

2011-12-09T23:13:00.000-05:00

I've reached a difficult point in my career. I have some big decisions to make. All I feel like doing is curling up and hoping that it will all go away, but I know that won't work. I have to be proactive and make sure I get what I want.

Forgive my silence this past month as I've been working on the future of my career. I'll tell you what happened once I come out the other side!

My Big Boy

2011-11-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

It is hard to believe that my sweet little boy is 5 years old! He turned 5 about a month ago, and we had a birthday dinner for him. The presents included Boba Fett action figures of various sizes, and a fancy steering wheel setup for the Playstation 3 that included a gear shift and pedals. But the biggest hit by far was an antique fan. Jeff picked it up off of Ebay, from an estate sale. It is 60 years old, but works beautifully still.

He still loves fans, and has amassed quite a collection. One of his birthday presents, a joint gift from my boss and my admin and their families, was a fan shaped like a dog. The actual fan part was located in the tummy of the dog. He loved this fan, and played with it for hours -- just turning it on, and then back off, on, and off, on, and off...

He's taken a fan to school for show-and-tell at nearly every available opportunity. And, speaking of school, he is doing really well at school. The main issue is that he is 5 days too young to be an official kindergartner, but at his school they are letting him participate in the kindergarten classes and we are paying the kindergarten rate. His teacher said his math skills are off the charts (gee, where did he get that, I wonder?) and his reading is at the 1st grade level. She said he should really be promoted to first grade next year, because he will be bored out of his wits and cause trouble if he has to repeat kindergarten. We have to start working now with figuring out how to get him tested and into first grade.

He has an amazing mastery of the English language. He often surprises me with the things he knows! I really love talking to him.

How to Get Yourself an Interview

2011-11-04T20:43:00.000-04:00

Some people despair that in science, it is an old-boys' club, and nobody outside can get in. While that is undoubtedly true in some areas, from my experience, computational science is a pretty open field. Sure, it doesn't hurt that I went to an extremely prestigious school and had a very famous and well-respected adviser, but I have gotten multiple interviews and several job offers without his direct help. I can give you some advice that has served me well:

Job-hunting is a lot like dating. In addition to your qualifications, there has to be a certain chemistry there, otherwise it will not work out. There have been jobs for which I was underqualified, but got offers nonetheless, because that chemistry was there. Conversely, I have been well qualified for some jobs that I did not get.
Your application is an advertisement for the product known as you. So make sure that it appeals to the people doing the hiring!

Write a stellar cover letter, outlining the ways in which your qualifications and experience satisfy the job requirements, and the great things that you can bring to the position. Be sure to include some indication of your personal enthusiasm for the position -- this goes a long way towards building the chemistry (or rapport) with the hiring manager. They want you to like them and what they have to offer, not just be a robot who does the work. Writing essays comes naturally to me, so I find it really easy to knock out a good cover letter quickly, but if you do not possess this gift, write a draft and get somebody who's a better writer than you to give you feedback.
Tailor your CV to the position. If you are applying for a technical job, outline your technical skills. If you are applying to work with me at a large HPC center, tell me how much experience you have with MPI, OpenMP, and other relevant libraries, tools, and programming languages, and tone down the irrelevant skills like your Microsoft Access training. If you are applying for a managerial position, then outline your managerial skills. Even if you don't directly supervise anyone, there are still relevant leadership skills and experiences that you may have.
Don't be scared to brag. Sometimes people don't know how awesome you are, so you need to tell them. If you are applying for a position in a different country, for example, they may not realize that your Ph.D. institution is ranked in the top 5 in the U.S., so this is something you need to tell them. And things that you think everybody should know if they are applying for this job (e.g., MPI for one of the positions I've been hiring for) -- you would be amazed how many people don't actually have those skills. So be sure to let us know you do have those skills!

Not getting a particular job is not the end of the world. There are many paths to happiness in life, many ways a career can go, and being flexible improves your ability for happiness.

Applying Late for Jobs and My View from Both Perspectives

2011-11-03T22:40:00.000-04:00

I was inspired to write this post after reading a question to Dr. Isis about applying for a job "too late" due to having had a baby, which interfered with the applicant's ability to apply in a timely manner.

I commented:

As a person who has been on both the job-searching and the hiring sides, deadlines are there for convenience but they are rarely hard deadlines. I once submitted an application 20 days after the deadline and still got an interview. As another datapoint, someone emailed me when I was wrapping up my decisions about who to interview for a job, and I told him to hurry up and apply. That candidate ended up being the best one, and just started the job yesterday!
It will take them two weeks before they really even start looking through the applications. Hiring is an extremely time-consuming process, but at the early stages it is easy to add in another application to be considered. So definitely apply.

I was once a wee beginning job applicant, afraid of annoying the powers that be by not following the rules. But, having now been at the other end of the table, I have a much different perspective. While there are some things that may disqualify you for a particular position, there are few acts so egregious that a hiring manager will remember your name and make sure that you never, ever get a job with anyone they know. (This is a notable exception!)

For that job where I applied 20 days too late, I told them my reason why. It wasn't even a very good reason -- I hadn't seen the job posting until that day, and it just seemed like something too good to pass up. I did not have a good excuse like Dr. Isis' correspondent. But my application was very strong and I got the interview. So it can happen. In the worst case, they don't interview you, which is the same result as if you had never applied.

Really though, unless they are a completely unreasonable person (in which case, you don't want that job anyhow!), there is no negative repercussion from applying a little late if you accidentally missed the application deadline. Now, that is not me giving you permission to willfully ignore all deadlines -- I'm just saying that honest mistakes are easily forgiven.

Job applicants often have this myopic vision of the hiring process. I was talking to one of the postdocs I'd hired and I complained about how hard it was to fill the position, how many times my offers were rejected, and how glad I was that they were there. "Oh," said the postdoc. "I only thought of it from the applicant's perspective -- it never occurred to me that you would be disappointed by people rejecting your job offers!"

Yes, we are disappointed by people rejecting our job offers! Just as much, if not more, than applicants are disappointed by not getting the job. It is a huge investment of time to screen applications, talk to applicants, bring them in for interviews, collect and evaluate feedback, and extend offers. I was so heartbroken the first time my offer was rejected. I really thought I'd had that candidate in the bag! But I had to get over it quickly and get the whole process started again.

Making a job offer is a lot like making a Jane Austen-era marriage proposal. You tell the person you really like them, they are just what you've been looking for, and you want to spend 40 hours a week together with them. You have these means to provide for them (a.k.a. a salary), and you hope to produce little hybrids of yourself and them (a.k.a. research papers), if only they find you as attractive as you find them. Then you smile nervously and hope they will say yes.

They usually have to take some time to think about your offer, and you desperately hope that they will think you are Mr. Bingley and not Mr. Collins. I've been Mr. Collins more often than I would like. In fact, I once had one person reject my job offer so that they would be free to possibly interview elsewhere (the place of their dreams, but that had not yet contacted them with any interest). I don't know if that puts me in the same league as Mr. Darcy with his first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, but that was a pretty odd rejection to say the least. But it was all good, I offered the job to the next person on the list, who verbally accepted it immediately, and I felt relief that the position was finally filled.

After experiencing both sides of the table, I understand the hiring process much more, and at this point I am unafraid of applying for jobs (if I were in a position that I needed to do so). I know how the system works. I would know how to make myself attractive to hiring managers because I have been in their shoes. I will write another post on that topic.

Musical Memories

2011-10-27T22:15:00.000-04:00

My Nissan Leaf came with 4 months of satellite radio for free, and I began listening to the classical music stations every day on my way to work and back. I got to hear a number of pieces of music that I once loved but had forgotten about. Because I was getting so much enjoyment out of it, I decided to purchase a subscription after the trial period expired. I'm still enjoying the classical stations and what they have to play. Here is a partial list of the music that I re-experienced:

On the Beautiful Blue Danube (thus the recent post)
Symphony #2 "Romantic" by Howard Hanson
Symphony #1 by Gustav Mahler
L'Arlesienne Suite by Georges Bizet
Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar
Overture to Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner
Symphony #5 by Dmitry Shostakovich
Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky
Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz

On Patriotism and Criticism

2011-10-26T08:08:00.003-04:00

When I was in the eighth grade, my family lived in England for a year. It was an experience that was very influential in my life.

It was good to be exposed to another culture and another way of doing things, to learn that there is more than one way to be. Yes, you can drive on the left side of the road and still have a functioning society. You can go to an all-girls school and survive the experience, even if you have to wear a gray uniform every day. And there are places where history goes much deeper than it does in this young country. I learned quite a bit of tolerance from the experience.

But most importantly, it informed my understanding of what it is to be an American. I returned to the United States with a deeper love and appreciation for my country. But it was not a blind, unquestioning patriotism -- it was a love very much like the love I feel for my family and close friends. I see this country's good points and I see its flaws, but most importantly, I can see its potential -- everything that these United States could be. It would be unfair to turn a blind eye to these flaws, and approve unquestioningly of everything done in the name of the United States. My loved ones deserve better! It is my duty to use my perspective to indentify the problems, and help my country overcome its shortcomings.

Music I Enjoy: Traumerei

2011-10-24T22:58:00.000-04:00

I played at some friends' wedding the weekend before last (these friends) -- and was asked to play Träumerei by Robert Schumann, a lyrical, reflective piece of music.

I had a recording of Joshua Bell (the violinist in the video above) playing the piece, and I listened and listened to him playing it, and even played along as practice.

But, Joshua Bell I am not! I don't have nearly the skills that he does, mostly because I don't practice nearly as often as he does, and my fingers don't move the way I want them to all the time, because of my ulnar nerve damage. Luckily, my friends were pleased with my performance (they got what they paid for and then some!).

I really like what Joshua Bell does with the piece though. I think the flow of his interpretation is perfect.

Music I Enjoy: On the Beautiful Blue Danube

2011-10-23T22:57:00.000-04:00

I hate to admit it, but all weekend, this has been going through my head:

That's bad enough, but what is even more shameful is that I've been enjoying it!Yes, it is overplayed. Yes, it is an earworm. But it is kind of fun. It makes me laugh. I love the beginning, preparing you for the imminent arrival of the waltz. It's like a sunrise, with the rays of sun just peeking above the horizon. You watch them get brighter and brighter, until the sun is up and the waltz begins in all earnestness. The ten minutes of music varies enough that it keeps you from getting too bored. There's even a brief minor section. It is definitely a waltz, and makes me want to dance around the house (ONE-two-three ONE-two-three) -- albeit without even a hundredth of the skill of the dancers in this video. Luckily since I am the only one at home I don't embarrass myself.

My Future Engineer

2011-09-26T22:00:00.000-04:00

Vinny has always loved things that go round and round -- wheels, windmills, you name it. He was terrified of the clothes washer for a while, because it went "boom boom boom" when the load was unbalanced and the noise scared him, but he has since overcome his fear and added washers to the list of fascinating things that go round and round.

He is so interested in washers that he has lately spent the majority of his computer time watching washer repair videos, which he can now quote word-for-word. (If there's something wrong with your washer, ask him what to do before you call a repairperson!) He always wants to help load and run the clothes washer, which is great except that while he is also excited to operate the dryer, he's much less interested in folding and putting away the clothes.

He also wants to play clothes washer. How do you play clothes washer, you may be asking? Well, he turns around and around, saying "ratta ratta ratta" as if he is the agitator in the center of the basket of a top-loading washer.

Yesterday he declared that he wanted to buy a washing machine and install it in the bathroom so that he can play with it. If it weren't for the space problems, I would be happy to buy him a cheap used one to tinker with! Instead, Jeff promised him that if we ever needed to get a new washer, he could help pick it out.

Another obsession of his is fans. He has enjoyed watching videos of fans on YouTube for years and years. There are people who have fan collections and post videos of them. There are videos by kids and adults alike. Vinny was especially inspired by the children with fan collections and began a collection of his own. He spends the money he gets for good behavior on new fans. And once, when he did something we were especially proud of, Jeff took him to Kmart and let him pick any toy he wanted. What did he select? A box fan, one with two knobs!

They have show and tell at his school every Monday and Friday, and every time, he has brought a different fan to share. Some of the kids are not interested in his fans, but other ones have developed an interest in fans thanks to him. In fact, we went to one of his classmates' birthday party a few weeks ago and the birthday girl had told her mother that Vinny had too many fans and should giver her one of his fans for her birthday. We gave her a brand-new fan of her own and it was like the best gift ever.

For Vinny's birthday, Jeff found an antique desk fan on eBay. We know he will love it. If only there were a small washer that we could get him (beyond the small pink toy we bought to try to help him overcome his fear of washers).

Computational Conversations

2011-09-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

(based on actual conversations I have had with domain scientists...)

Solving a scientific problem? I can help!

Is it a partial differential equation? I know something about that. I've solved Schrödinger's equation in many forms. Advection and diffusion I know well. Choose your finiteness: finite elements, finite differences, or finite volumes? Each one has its own advantages and pitfalls.

Linear algebra? Use an optimized BLAS library, not the reference library! Our vendor has a group of applied mathematicians who developed these math libraries just for you. Don't let all their effort go to waste! Eigenvalues -- you don't need to orthogonalize at every step, just every so often. Maybe it will require a few more iterations, but the iterations will be so much cheaper...

Optimization? Yes! Finally something I am an expert in! Okay, so what type of problem are you solving? Is it convex? Is the objective function cheap to evaluate? How many parameters? Is it a mixed-integer program? Actually, I think your problem could be reformulated as a combinatorial optimization problem and we could try an evolutionary algorithm...

Oh, you meant code optimization. Yes, I can do that too. See these loops? Since it's Fortran, we need to reorder the loops so that the array is accessed by its first index in the innermost loop, not its second. See, we just got a 4x performance boost just by swapping these indices. Okay, let's change this array to a function, because it is easily calculated and the function can be inlined whereas that memory lookup can't. And let's eliminate these "if" statements by dividing this loop into two parts.

Your job fails at 120,000 MPI processes, but not below that? What happens when it fails? How long does it take to get to the point of failure? What is the code doing when it fails? Does it always happen in the same place? Let me ask my sysadmin colleague to look in the top-secret log files that only they can view...

Does this computation depend on that one, or can it be done in any order? Is there any reason to keep this data after initialization? What if we used this framework? Asynchronously spawning new tasks would implicitly load balance this algorithm. Your algorithm is not scalable. The synchronizing you do will be a huge bottleneck as you scale up. It may work okay now, but at the petascale or beyond there will be scalability issues coming out of the woodwork, things even beyond this synchronization issue. Trust me, I have seen this happen even in my own codes. Let my pain be your gain!

I may not be a scientist in your field, but I know a lot of things that can help you. I've boosted the performance of codes by a factor of two with a single keystroke. I may not have seen your problem before, but I've seen something like it.

Radio Silence

2011-09-24T22:59:00.000-04:00

Hello world!

I have found that when I am under a lot of stress, I tend to just retreat inside myself. I don't want to talk about the stress and I can't think of anything else to talk about, so I just get quiet.

The past two months have been that way for me. There has been a lot of stress. I have retreated and remained silent.

The stress is still there but I am trying to think about other things to talk about. Please bear with me; my creative juices do not flow well under these circumstances.

Leaf Beliefs

2011-07-15T23:04:00.000-04:00

My younger sister is a professor of religion, who focuses on environmental ethics, so she has been really interested in hearing what I am feeling about the ethical implications of owning and operating an electric car. Since I have had it for a grand total of nine days, I of course feel inherently qualified to discuss all the ethical implications of the Nissan Leaf. (*grin*)

As I said before, I felt a strong ethical impulse to buy the car, and it went further than simple carbon footprint reduction. I have enough disposable income that I can afford more than just the basic necessities, and I like to choose ethical ways in which to spend my money. This is why I buy a share in a local farm -- I support the local economy and get tasty fruits and veggies to eat. I also want to spend my money to encourage more good works, which is why I donate to good causes (e.g., GLBT equality).

I feel that buying a Nissan Leaf helped me to further both these goals. It is ethical to avoid buying gasoline -- the instability in the Middle East is fueled by our insatiable appetite for petroleum. (Of course there are ethical issues with the way that electric power is generated, but I think this is the lesser of two evils.) By being one of the earliest adopters of the technology, I am monetarily encouraging a company that is taking a bold ethical step.

My sister also asked me whether I felt "less-polluting joy" every time I drove the car. I told her that yes, I do feel a certain sense of joy every time I get into my coal-powered car. (Most of our electricity comes from coal.) Sometimes I just feel like, "Oh hey, I can drive anywhere I want! I am not polluting at all! I will never walk anywhere again!"

Except, yeah, I'm still polluting. It's not coming out of my tailpipe. It's coming out of a smokestack instead. While it is less than what would come from a tailpipe, even if it's 100% coal powered, that doesn't mean you are absolved of responsibility for pollution.

But since it is hard to see those emissions, it is hard to feel guilty when you step on the pedal and accelerate a little more than you would have otherwise. And it does accelerate so smoothly and so instantaneously...

More About Leaf

2011-07-11T23:18:00.000-04:00

I have been enjoying the new car immensely. Scarlet drives like a dream. This weekend my dad came for a visit and I took him for a spin in it. He was very interested in how it all worked.

I have discovered some more cool features on the owners' portal website. First, you can plan routes, making sure that you have enough range to do the entire route, and then send those routes to the car's navigation system. Tomorrow I have to go somewhere unfamiliar for work, so I availed myself of this feature. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Second, you remember the little trees you can earn for driving efficiently? Well, it turns out that it records the number of trees you earn and then rates your performance. I apparently drive okay but there is a lot of room for improvement. I am ranked number eight-hundred-something out of all the drivers. Number one gets nearly an order of magnitude more miles per kilowatt than I do. I don't know what I'm doing wrong or they are doing right.

All About Leaf

2011-07-07T23:15:00.002-04:00

I am pleased to report that as of Tuesday afternoon, I am a proud owner of a Nissan Leaf! We named her Scarlet, because she is a beautiful red. The car is a she, because it is awesome, innovative, and pioneering.

I'm not usually one to just jump in and be an early adopter of technology. After all, I've had a text-enabled cellphone for less than a year. But I feel so strongly that electric vehicles are the only thing that will help our transportation-related carbon emissions to cease, that I wanted to support the effort.

I am fortunate enough that I have a good job that allows us to support ourselves comfortably and still afford this car. It is not cheap. There are some tax breaks (including a $7500 federal income tax rebate) but that only goes so far. The cost of charging up is a lot less than the corresponding cost of gasoline, but even then, since I drive so little (the Beetle just crossed the 35,000-mile threshold) this saves me maybe $40 per month. I anticipate that we will take this car on errands around town, instead of our other car, so we should save a little more than that. Still, less than $100 in savings.

Anyhow, onward to the car!

This is Scarlet, parked in our carport. You can see the home charging station installed by two electricians beginning at 7:30 am this past Tuesday. I had to get the charger installed before I was allowed to bring home the car.

Another view of the car.

Check out that headlight. It has a fin on it, for aerodynamics purposes I assume.

Another view, trying to show that fin.

I think the fin is pretty clear in this photo. Maybe the cars of the 1950's had something going for them!

A view from the driver's seat. That little window between the side and the windshield doesn't buy you much.

Here's a view across to the other side.

Between the seats. That is one tiny shifter as we will see later.

The console can show a cool map telling you how far you can go without running out of charge, and a bunch of other things.

To start the car, depress the brake pedal and push the power button!

Here's the view you get: On the left is the battery temperature. On the right is the battery charge and the number of miles it estimates I can go. At the top center is a gauge for how much power I am drawing (or regenerating). In the center it tells me how long it will take to recharge at various voltages, and the odometer.

At the top, above the steering wheel, you can see the speedometer in the center. On the right is a clock and temperature gauge, and on the left is a gauge telling you how efficiently you are driving, and rewarding you for your efficient driving by generating little trees. The more trees, the better. Unfortunately, they all get reset every time you turn the car off.

Here I am shifting into reverse by moving the shifter to the left and forward. You shift into drive by going left and backward. Of course this all makes perfect sense! I double check which gear I'm in every time before I release the brake because I am so confused.

When you put it in reverse, a rear-view camera comes up on the console. This is handy because the rear window is tiny. The stripes are not part of my driveway decor; they represent distance.

A little light reading that came with the car. I've made it through one of those books so far!

So I made it to work now. I am a cheapskate and since my workplace provides free charging, I am going to take advantage of it! So, I pull the lever to open the charging compartment, located on the front of the car just under the place where you open the hood.

Here's what it looks like when it is open. On the right is where you plug in the 240V charger, which is what we have at home and at work. The one on the left is for the 480V charging stations, which do not actually exist yet, but when they do, I will be able to drive this car to see my Dad, with a short stop to recharge on the way there.

I opened the cover for the 240V socket, and this is what it looks like.

Here is the charging station, which looks almost exactly like what I have at home...

...except that, for this charger, you have to activate it with your magic card. The electrons are free in exchange for tracking my usage information.

It's ready to go...

So I remove the plug from the dock...

...start plugging it in.

... and I push it in until I hear a click...

It's in!

We are charging!

A view of the trunk. It is pretty big. That black bag is a 120V trickle charger that you can plug into a regular wall outlet in a pinch. There is no spare tire, but there is a tire repair kit in the left wheel well.

As you can see, I am not the only person with a Leaf at work. The Head Honcho has a Red one like mine, and several other VIPs have them as well. My car schmoozes with other cars belonging to important people!

Nissan has an owners' portal, where you can check the status of your car. You can also program it to start the climate control while plugged in, saving your battery from doing all that work. It's handy if you want your car to be comfortable just before you leave work, for example.

Here I set the timer to start cooling the car at 3:45 this afternoon...

...and it's set.

Huh? There's a message on my cellphone!

It's from Scarlet, telling me that the vehicle's status has been updated.

It's 3:45 and the AC is on! Nice of Scarlet to let me know!

Time to go home! If you get in the car while it is still plugged in, you will see this warning on the dash. It won't let you go anywhere while still plugged in, but as I found out this afternoon because I was too obsessed with snapping pictures to pay enough attention, it will let you go with the charging door still open.

I unplug the charger, and notice as I am putting it back on the dock that I have received a text message:

The climate control stopped when I unplugged it.

I hopped into the car and came home. It is really a great car. It has good acceleration and other than being so quiet, it really seems just like a regular car. In fact, it is so quiet that at speeds of 19 mph or below, it generates noise so that pedestrians can hear it coming. Another interesting thing is that because it is so quiet, you can hear a lot of noise coming from the other cars around you. At stoplights I hear everyone else's music.

Anyhow, it is great and I am really enjoying the car. I hope you enjoyed a vicarious taste of this awesome car!

Queen of Nerdingham

2011-06-24T21:56:00.001-04:00

In case the Ph.D. in computer science was not enough of a giveaway on this, let me just say that I am a huge nerd. I take pride in this fact, actually, but I have not always felt this way.

Growing up, I was made fun of a lot because I was a nerd. I felt really bad about being a nerd, but there was nothing I could do about it -- I just love to think, learn new things, and exercise my brain.

I didn't have the perspective then that I have now. I didn't see that knowledge, and the ability to analyze and sort through it, is power; that freedom lies between the ears; or that the strength of my mind and the determination of my will could save me from despair.

Today, I am grateful for my nerd traits. My love of thinking and learning enables me to solve problems of all kinds. It allows me to function well in the world. And it helps me make a really good living and support my family.

I'm a Winner!

2011-06-23T22:51:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I found out that the project I worked on as a postdoc won a major honor. It wasn't until someone emailed me a congratulatory note that I realized that my name had been included in the nomination as well!

I spent about an hour laughing about the unexpected honor. A friend at work told me that I should be proud and I deserved the recognition.

I don't feel like I do, but that is mostly because I have not worked on that project for several years. But when I think about it, I actually did make a substantial contribution: although they don't use the algorithms I developed, they do still use the framework I developed for them.

Fostering: Continuing Education

2011-06-22T22:41:00.002-04:00

EcoGeoFemme asks:
Do you feel like the training/continuing ed is useful, or just red tape? Have you learned anything from it?

Good question! In principle, the training and continuing education is a great idea. I can tell you from my brief experience so far, we can use all the help we can get! But I actually have not yet taken a class so I don't know yet whether it is useful. But there is one scheduled for sometime next month so I will update you on what I think.

Have any questions about foster parenting? Feel free to leave them in the comments, and I'll answer as best I can!

Fostering: The Home Study

2011-06-09T21:20:00.000-04:00

Ginger asked about the questions they ask during the home study.

The home study has two parts: first, examining your home to make sure that it is safe and has enough room for a child or children; and second, interviews with the family members.

After she first arrived, I gave the social worker a tour of our house. I took her to every room, told her how we used each room, and pointed out the room where the child would stay. She made sure that we had sufficient smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, that all our medications were locked away, and the house and yard were safe in general. There was a whole checklist of requirements, including things that did not apply to us (e.g., swimming pools must be fenced in). We also had to have a bedroom that the child could sleep in -- they don't necessarily need a room to themselves, but it needs to be a bedroom and not a hallway or a shed(!).

Then, she interviewed me. I was asked about my childhood and my general biographical history, my parents and siblings, how my parents disciplined me, the current status of my relationships with family members, my educational and employment history, my current job and how I feel about it, my religious beliefs and my openness to those with differing beliefs, how I handle anger, how I discipline Vinny, my relationship with Jeff. I was also asked about any drug addicts or alcoholics in my immediate and extended families, and about Jeff's history with substances. And at the end, I was asked what my goals were and what sort of foster care I would be interested in doing, and what types of children I would want to have.

On a second visit, Jeff was interviewed, and the questions were about the same. The social worker interviewed Vinny, too, asking him what kinds of kids he would like to have stay with us.

After the interviews, the social worker wrote up a document about our house and about us, and sent it to us to revise and correct. When we were satisfied that it was accurate, we signed a form to certify our approval and the home study process was complete!

In order to retain our license, we must have a home inspection annually, as well as stay current in CPR and First Aid certifications and receive 15 hours of continuing education each year. Luckily the profiles of us will remain valid and we won't have to answer all those questions again unless we let the license expire!

Have any questions about foster parenting? Feel free to leave them in the comments, and I'll answer as best I can!

Fostering: Q&A

2011-06-07T22:54:00.000-04:00

GMP asked: From what you wrote it seems that prospective foster parents are quite thoroughly checked. In contrast, there are all these horror stories about foster care abuse cases in the news and TV shows -- do you feel they are grossly exaggerated?

I think there are varying degrees of abuse and mistreatment that occur in the foster care system, and the worst ones get sensationalized by the media. The reasons for abuse and mistreatment in the foster care system are many.

First, foster parents are human beings, just like everyone else. We all make mistakes with our biological children, and it is even harder to do the right thing every time with a child you don't know very well. Foster children, who are justifiably hurting and scared, can react in very unexpected ways and really try your patience. So if you are not well prepared or having a particularly bad day, you might reach the end of your rope before you know what happened.

Second, a lot of the people who are attracted to becoming foster parents had bad childhoods themselves. They want to make up for their own bad childhoods by providing an abused or neglected child with the care they themselves could have used as a child. While this is certainly a noble motivation, the foster parent's own childhood issues can result in them having a limited skillset when it comes to rearing children. Couple this limited skillset with children who test your mettle and you can really have an explosive environment.

Third, there are evil people who want to become foster parents for the purpose of exploiting children. The successful ones do not have criminal records and they have sufficient social skills that they can pass the home study process without tipping anyone off to their psychopathology. In our classes, our teacher told us about a case where a man who did not (yet) have a criminal record became a foster parent for the sole purpose of grooming teenage girls so he could sexually abuse them. Luckily they caught him before he could do much damage.

On my flight out of Alaska, I was seated next to an Alaskan foster mom. We talked quite a bit, and compared notes about the foster care systems in our states. The Tennessee system seems quite a bit more generous than the Alaska system, despite Tennessee's relative poverty as a state. We receive more money to take care of the kids (sad, considering the extremely high cost of living in Alaska), and they do not receive respite care. Our kids receive an allowance of $1/day, money that belongs to them, whereas Alaska's kids do not receive an allowance. Also, Tennessee will pay for college or vocational training for youngsters who age out of the foster system, but Alaska does not.

I think this illustrates pretty clearly how different each state's system is. That's why it seems to me that in some states the rules are more lax than in others, and there is more abuse within the system. Florida is a state that seems to have a notoriously bad foster care system. I'm sure this is due to the fact that the social workers are overworked and lack the resources to give all the children in the system the care that they need, and some end up falling through the cracks.

But even in the best systems, there will be mistakes and people get licensed who should not be. And being a foster parent is hard! I can understand how the frustration of it can lead people to make bad parenting choices out of desperation. It's not an excuse but it is an explanation.

Have any questions about foster parenting? Feel free to leave them in the comments, and I'll answer as best I can!

Making History

2011-06-01T12:04:00.001-04:00

This morning we left for Illinois, to join my sister and should-be sister-in-law in making history. You see, today marks the beginning of civil unions in Illinois, and my sister and her better half are among the first to be joined in civil unity.

There's a big ceremony tomorrow morning in a Chicago park, in which couples from across the state will participate. The governor and the mayor will both speak. I am really excited to be a part of the festivities and I am also looking forward to the time we will spend together after the ceremony!

Alaskan Adventures

2011-05-31T23:20:00.000-04:00

The thing I didn't mention in the previous post is that my business travel was to Alaska. There was a conference up there and afterwards, I stayed for a few days extra. My sister Rachel flew up from Vancouver to join me in exploring the Alaskan countryside.

We took a train from Fairbanks to Denali National Park, where we spent two days. One morning we had a wilderness tour in the park, which consisted of riding along the road in a bus with a tour guide, periodically stopping for pictures, especially when wildlife crossed our field of vision. We saw many animals, including moose, caribou, fox, and a lynx.

We also saw the dramatic Denali landscape,

and Mount McKinley.

I took so many pictures, my camera ran out of battery power and I had to stop. I am not much of a picture-taking person, but I felt compelled to preserve the experience somehow.

For most of the rest of our time, we hiked around some trails at the entrance to the park, and admired the rushing glacial melt and the spectacular peaks around us.

I was fascinated by all the ice on the ground, still melting.

The sun essentially did not set the whole time we were there -- at best it was twilight for a few short hours before the day began anew, so we had to draw the curtains tightly if we were to get any sleep.

It was a really amazing experience that words cannot begin to describe -- and neither can pictures. To be in a place so untouched by humans, so wild, so vast, so rugged -- it was a very emotional experience for me. I pretty much could not wipe the goofy grin off my face. I exclaimed at the amazing landscapes, the high mountain peaks, the wild animals. I felt so connected to the natural world -- more connected than ever before. I could see why people fall in love with Alaska and stay, despite the harsh conditions.

Business Travel

2011-05-25T13:47:00.000-04:00

I am on business travel this week, at a conference. Overall, I am having a lot of fun. But there are moments that are not fun, especially for a woman business traveler in a male-dominated field. Over the past four days, I have had the following experiences:

My supervisor's supervisor (hereafter referred to as Boss) and I were traveling on the same flights. Upon boarding the plane, I saw Boss was already on, so I made a comment to him about the legroom of his seat on the plane. His row-mate volunteered to trade seats with me in exchange for payment so I could sit next to Boss. I suggested he take it up with Boss, since he is richer than I am. The guy discounted monetary wealth as unimportant and waxed rhapsodic about happiness and the quality of life. At that point his words combined with the creepy vibes I'd been getting from him made me realize what type of payment he was thinking of, so I declined and disengaged from the conversation. My suspicions about his motives were confirmed when Boss told me the guy had invited us to join him in the airport lounge. (Hint: he was not interested in Boss's company.)
Upon checking in at the hotel, I was asked if Boss and I were together. No, we are not. Also, he has kids who are my age.
At a social event, I was mistaken for being married to another one of my colleagues. At least this person realized that I worked in the same place as my would-be spouse.
Conference attendees get free breakfast at the hotel restaurant. This morning, I was charged for my breakfast, because I was obviously the spouse of one of the men I was eating with.

These are small slights, but they all add up to make business travel a lot less enjoyable for me than it is for my male colleagues.

Child Logic

2011-05-07T22:56:00.016-04:00

Vinny has a cough and a bit of a cold, so yesterday morning I gave him some children's cough syrup before school. I went into the kitchen with the breakfast dishes and left him at the table to drink it down. While I was rinsing them off in the sink, I heard him say something to the effect of, "I wonder if this would help my nose, too."

When I returned to the dining room, I saw that his nose was all red -- the same color as the cough syrup. He had tried snorting some of it into his nose, I soon found out after he started screaming in pain! He kept telling me it was an accident -- but I think it was only an accident in the sense that it unexpectedly hurt him.

I helped him blow his nose and get all the cough syrup out. He was a little freaked out because he mistook the red dye in the cough syrup for blood -- probably because his nose was burning so badly. He whimpered for a while but eventually the pain went away. I stressed to him the importance of using medicines as they are supposed to be used. My doctor prescribed me some nasal spray in an effort to help my sad sniffer -- and I explained to Vinny that if I swallowed the medicine meant to be sniffed, I would be in trouble. Hopefully he understood, but even if he didn't, I suspect that this experience will warn him off of trying to snort any kind of illicit drugs!

Electric Car Update

2011-05-06T22:55:00.000-04:00

I was supposed to get my Nissan Leaf this month. Unfortunately, with the earthquake in Japan (where this year's Nissan Leafs are being manufactured -- if you buy one next year it will be made in Tennessee) that date got pushed off until July. It is too bad because the last time I filled the tank of my Volkswagen Beetle it cost me more than $41 -- and that was with a $0.50/gallon discount.

But July is better than never, and really, there are so many worse things that earthquake did than delay the arrival of my car by two months, that I can't complain. It's just that I'm really excited about getting it so it kind of stinks that I won't get it as soon as I had thought.

Fostering: Transitioning Children

2011-04-29T21:36:00.000-04:00

The next step is to match us with a child to foster. We are interested in adopting a child, so we are interested in finding a child whose parents rights have been terminated and is eligible for adoption. We also have certain preferences about the child. As I said earlier, we want a child who has a good chance of living on their own and being a contributing member of society with the help of our nurturing as they grow up. We did not care about the child's race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity, and in fact I told the social worker that we would be a good family for a GLBT child.

She has found a child that may be a good fit for our family. As I said, I can't say anything about the child due to privacy issues, but I can tell you how the process is going to work.

Resource parents (foster parents) get two weekends a month free from doing foster care. During that time the child goes to another household for respite care. So, first we will be the respite care providers for this child for a while. Then, if that goes well, the child will transition to living with us as our foster child. And if that goes well, then after six months we will be allowed to adopt the child (with the child's permission if the child is above a certain age). Adoption will not be mentioned to the child until that last step, because we don't want to get the child's hopes up in case it doesn't work out.

There are other types of fostering that other foster parents do. As I mentioned, there is respite care, where you care for different children on the weekend so the regular week resource parents can get a break. There are also step-down resource families, who care for a child for a period of approximately six months, as the child transitions from a group home environment back to their family. And then there are emergency care resource parents, who take in children who have just been removed from their homes and are in need of a place to stay immediately. We considered doing the step-down program until an adoptable child came along, because the percentage of children in the foster care system who are adoptable is actually pretty low. But it seems like there is currently a child who might be a good fit in our family, so we are going to pursue that child.

Fostering: Paperwork and Red Tape

2011-04-28T21:23:00.002-04:00

Of course there is a lot of paperwork to be done in order to become foster parents. You have to give them a lot of information about your own upbringing, your family members and friends, and your finances. They send forms to family and friends of your choosing who assess your personality, stability, and ability to care for children. You have to show documentation about your family finances to make sure that you are not using the foster care payments to support yourselves. You have to have a full physical to establish your fitness to care for children. And you have to be fingerprinted and get a background check performed.

They inspect your house to make sure it is a safe place for a child. You have to be able to provide the foster child with a bedroom, and preferably a private room if possible. All your medications have to be locked away so that children can't get into them, and there must be enough smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in your house.

They interview you about your life, including your childhood, what sort of discipline techniques your parents used, and what you use. Spanking or physical punishment of foster children is prohibited, as are other abusive punishments such as withholding food or locking them up. Luckily we don't spank (or abuse!) in this household anyhow, so nothing had to change in that department. They ask why you want to be a foster parent, and what sort of children you would prefer or be most compatible with. Each of us was interviewed separately, and also asked about any drug use or addiction issues in our immediate and extended families.

Then, the social worker writes up the home study, provides a copy for us to review and correct, and files it after incorporating our comments. We are now licensed foster parents. The next step is setting us up with a foster child.

Fostering: Four Weeks of Training

2011-04-27T22:46:00.021-04:00

In order to adopt a child from the foster care system in Tennessee, you have to complete 30 hours of training, become certified in CPR and first aid, and complete a home study. Then, you are eligible to be a foster parent. You have to do ten hours of continuing education, keep your CPR and first aid certifications up to date, and have your home inspected every year in order to remain a licensed foster home. If you want to adopt a child whose parents rights have been terminated, you have to foster that child for at least six months before you are eligible to adopt them. Depending on the child's age, he or she must agree to be adopted.

We began our classes the first week of October. The first night was quite emotionally intense. We watched a video with a man who had grown up in the foster care system and had never been adopted. The losses he had sustained were still with him today, even though he is a highly successful doctor. Listening to him talk about how he felt growing up, and just seeing the grief on his face tugged at my heartstrings.

I have experienced a limited amount of loss, but nothing like him (or any kid in the foster system). But I could empathize somewhat with him. Still, it was really eye-opening.

There was homework after every class, mostly review questions on the material we'd learned. A lot of what we discussed about the kids and how to handle them I already knew, but maybe not in words. The take-home message for me was that the kids may do things that appear strange and dysfunctional to you, but that in their previous environment, those behaviors serve a good function. For example, an older kid may wet the bed because it's a good way to keep their abuser away. The trick to changing those behaviors is to help the child feel in control and no longer need to do those things. (Of course, that is often easier said than done.)

Fostering: the Origin of the Idea

2011-04-26T22:53:00.002-04:00

When I was about ten, a woman from an international adoption agency came to our church and talked about international adoption. It seemed like the most wonderful thing: we could essentially rescue a baby from a dead-end life and provide them with the unbounded opportunities that we have in this country. A great way to save the world, one child at a time! I was hooked. I decided I would adopt a child when I grew up.

But as an adult, I began to see just how problematic international adoption is. Wouldn't it be better to create opportunities for the child (and everyone else) in their home country instead of whisking one child out of there? International adoption costs tens of thousands of dollars per child -- and that kind of money could go really far in an impoverished country towards satisfying the needs of many children.

Furthermore, there are many children right here at home who need families. Why go halfway across the world when there are kids halfway across the city who could use your help? I decided that adopting a local child would be best.

A lot of people prefer to adopt babies, which leaves a lot of older kids without a home. This did not strike me as fair to those children. I determined that I would want to adopt an older child.

That being said, I realized that I had some constraints. I would want to adopt a child to provide him or her with opportunities that would enable the child to live independently and become a contributing member of society. So I would be the most interested in adopting a child who had a high probability of being able to live independently and be successful.

Jeff was always aware that I wanted to adopt a child. He wanted to have a biological child, which we did. After a lot of discussion and thinking it over, Jeff was ready to start down the adoption pathway with me. So I looked at the state's website and tried to figure out how to be eligible to adopt a child from the child welfare system. I made a couple of calls, trying to figure out what to do. The state social worker suggested that I contact one of the private agencies that the state contracts with. I looked at the websites of several local agencies, and finally connected with someone at an agency that I liked,* and signed us up for the classes.

* I was cautious about private agencies because most of them are religious-based (e.g., Catholic charities, Baptist adoption agencies, etc.), and I did not feel that they would be accepting of my reverse-traditional, nonreligious family. But I found one that was secular so I went with them.

Our New Adventure

2011-04-25T21:43:00.002-04:00

In October, Jeff and I embarked on a new adventure together. It began with thirty hours of classes (plus homework, despite the promise I made to myself after graduating that I would never take another class again).

Lots of paperwork and elbow grease later, we are licensed foster parents (or, as we are called in Tennessee, resource parents). Our first foster child arrives this next week, for 48 hours of respite care.

For privacy reasons, I can't tell you anything about the child, or even how the visit went after it is over. But I can tell you about our journey: what made us decide to do it, and what we had to do to become licensed.

House of (Poor) Health

2011-04-23T09:38:00.000-04:00

This has been a month of sickness at Casa Rebecca. It began on April 1, when we were supposed to go to Kentucky to see my sister, should-be sister-in-law, and nephew, who were at my parents' house. Jeff was too under the weather to go along, so I took Vinny up there for a 24-hour visit, because I had to get back home to fly out early Sunday morning for a conference. We were stopped on the interstate in the middle of nowhere because there had been an accident, when Vinny started screaming about his eyes hurting. Two hours later, my bonus mom looked at his eyes and declared that he had pinkeye.

I felt like the world's best aunt: bringing my contagious child to expose my nephew to disease at the very beginning of an epic two-month cross-country trip. But I took Vinny to an urgent treatment center on Saturday morning to get him medicated, and then we devised ways that the boys could play together without spreading infection.

Treating Vinny for the pinkeye was not so fun. He was really scared of the drops and I would just hold him down and put them in, but I didn't know how Jeff was going to handle that after I was away. But luckily, Jeff had a stroke of genius and let Vinny put allergy eyedrops into Jeff's eyes. After it became a mutual eye-dropping process, there was no longer an issue.

On Sunday I traveled to San Francisco for a conference. I was staying at a beautiful hotel at the top of Nob Hill. On Monday I was abnormally tired -- beyond the usual fatigue of sleep deprivation, jet lag, etc. Monday night I woke up with severe chills -- I suffered through them all night because I had not thought to pack any medicine. In the morning, I had a choice: walk three blocks straight downhill to a pharmacy, and then try to hike the three blocks straight back up, or pay $10 for some gold-plated tylenol from the hotel. I paid the $10. They even delivered it to me. I spent most of Tuesday lying around in my room.

I found out that a friend of mine was going to be on the same flights as me on the way home, and on Wednesday morning we left San Francisco. For the connection I had requested assistance to get between the gates, so I got to ride one of those people movers for the first time, which was fun. But the landings of my flights were incredibly painful to my ears, which were apparently congested (I had no idea until I flew). I understand why babies cry when the plane is landing. I was tugging at my ear lobes in the hopes that something would help. When I got home, my ears were so clogged that the outside world sounded like it does when I wear earplugs.

The next morning, I went to the medical center at work, where they gave me some antibiotics for my ear infection, and then I stayed home for two days. I was feeling enough improved to go to work on Monday, especially because I wanted to avoid the paperwork.* But I did go to my regular doctor on Wednesday, because my ears were still incredibly painful.

I am a good and sharing wife, and I passed whatever I had over to Jeff. I had blamed him for my illness, and it may be that he did give it to me and then I gave it back to him in mutated form (with earache). So he went to the doctor this past Tuesday because he was feeling so lousy.

On Tuesday I hosted an interviewee. Normally I am polite and shake people's hands, but I did not shake his because I had noticed that my eyes were feeling grainy and painful and were getting kind of pink. The next day I went to the doctor and she confirmed that I had pinkeye. And yesterday it seemed like Jeff was coming down with it too. We have washed all the towels and sheets in hot water and are now using them only once before throwing them back in the wash again, until the infection subsides. We are also watching Vinny's eyes to make sure that he doesn't get it again. He has been dispensing the drops into my eyes for me, and takes the whole process, including hand-washing, very seriously.

We had invited my dad and bonus mom down for the weekend, but they uninvited themselves after finding out about all the germs in our household. "We'll come another time," they said. We've been sick for nearly 4 weeks in this household, but surely it's got to end!

* My workplace has a strange policy that if you are absent from work for more than 4 days in a row with the same condition, you are placed on short-term disability. Weekends count against the number of days, probably to discourage people from using sick days for vacation. This is not the first time I have dragged myself in to work in order to avoid the arduous paperwork process. All you have to do is survive a half day and the counter gets reset.

Racing for a Cause

2011-04-18T21:31:00.003-04:00

This May will be the third time that I have run in a 5K race benefitting a local CASA group. A colleague of mine was the original organizer of this race and she is also a CASA volunteer. For those who don't know, CASA stands for Court-Appointed Special Advocates, and these volunteers are there to represent the best interests of the child as they navigate through the family court and child welfare system. I admire my colleague and her tireless efforts at bettering the lives of children.

I do what I can to support the cause. Last year, I strong-armed a lot of friends into participating in the race. This year, in conjunction with a wellness initiative at work encouraging people to walk more, I have started a walking group and invited the people in my department to participate, with the goal of training up to walk this 5K race in May. And on Wednesday, we will hold a pizza party/informational meeting about the race, in an effort to encourage more people to sign up.

I don't think I could do what my friend does, at least not at this point in my life. It's important work and I hope to contribute in my own way to bettering the lives of children in the foster care system.

Jim's Pancakes

2011-04-17T19:50:00.003-04:00

This is a cool site my should-be sister-in-law tipped me off to: Jim's Pancakes. Jim is much more talented than I could ever hope to be when it comes to making pancakes, and makes all kinds of interesting pancake sculptures for his daughters.

Happy Fair Pay Day!

2011-04-12T22:30:00.000-04:00

What, you aren't having a big party? Actually, neither am I. Today is the day of the year that marks how many additional days it would take for the average woman to earn as much as the average man did in 2010. Not exactly something to celebrate. Female Computer Scientist has a good post about it, for your erudition!

Intelligence vs. Kindness

2011-04-10T10:26:00.000-04:00

When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people. -Abraham Joshua Heschel (via)

Intelligence is so over-hyped and over-rated! As a child, my intelligence was honed sharply from birth. All the music, the education, and the extracurricular activities were aimed at putting me at the top of the brightest and best. My intelligence was to be used to change the world -- to fix all its problems, to make a difference.

While kindness was not optional, it was (ironically) enforced in a very unkind manner. I was expected (based on my intelligence, I suppose) to be capable of age-inappropriate feats, such as being thoughtful at the age of four.* And kindness to others was often motivated by our duty as privileged people, not as a natural consequence of being interconnected.

I have overcome a great deal of my elitist upbringing, although there is still much to do. I attribute much of my success to my inner sense of justice, which has always been with me.** My intelligence has also played a role, allowing me to think abstractly about others' hurtful behaviors, rather than being immediately insulted; broadening my outlook on the world around me; and giving me the ability to process stimuli in several ways before settling on a conclusion.

Kindness is my connection to humanity -- it is the love I feel for those I know and those I don't; those who are kind to me and those who are not; those who are hurting and facing injustice.

Becoming a mother has dramatically increased my kindness and sensitivity towards others, especially children. Children are the most vulnerable human beings on earth, and I feel compelled to do what I can to help make their lives better.

While I know I cannot save the world (certainly not with my intelligence alone!), I can create a little ripple where I am that will propagate to those around me. And perhaps if I make that wave, they will be inspired to create a wave of their own, and before long, the whole seascape has been redefined.

* As the mother of a four-year-old, I can tell you it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to be thoughtful. It's just something their brains are lacking at this point in development. The trick is to model the behavior you want them to eventually develop.

** My mom was once called out of the church service because in my Sunday School class we were playing Musical Chairs, which I found to be an unjust game because not everyone got to have a chair! I threw a fit and they had to get her there to calm me down.

A Tale of Two Blisters

2011-04-05T00:21:00.000-04:00

Almost two years ago, my mean running coach was away for a while, so I was walking at lunchtime nearly every weekday with my friend "C." She and I walked a 5K route that I had discovered. Every day as we were headed out, we would see my friend "J" from upstairs, walking back towards our building.

My brain, although primarily occupied with math, does think about other things sometimes. I had long ago realized that C and J had a lot in common, and would probably make a good couple. But, at that time they were both getting over painful breakups, and neither felt that they were ready to date. Still, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce them to each other in a non-dating, no-pressure environment.

"You know that guy I wave at every day?" I said to C. "He's one of my colleagues from upstairs. He has lost more than 50 pounds since the beginning of the year. I bet he would love to see our walking route. Would you mind if I invited him along sometime?"

Not at all, said C, always a good sport. So I talked to J, really hyping up the awesomeness that was our walking route, and he agreed to try it out for a change of pace.

Alas, the day the three of us were supposed to go walking, I had developed two enormous blisters on the soles of my feet, and was unable to walk such a long distance. My socks were not wicking the sweat away from my feet sufficiently, and the rubbing had caused these two big blisters to develop on the balls of my feet.

"I'm sorry," I said to J, "but I will be unable to walk today. But I'm sure C would be happy to show you the route!" J replied that since he didn't know her, he wasn't comfortable walking with her. Despite my assurances that she did not bite, he could not be persuaded. "Oookay," I said. "I probably won't be better until next week, but we'll do it then."

C came over to my office later that morning, and I told her about my blisters and what J had said. "Let's solve that problem!" she said, and we walked upstairs and she introduced herself to him: "Hello, my name is C, now you know me and we can go walking today."

They went walking that day, and every day for the rest of the week while my sad blisters healed. In that time, they got a chance to talk and get to know each other, and they really hit it off. After my blisters healed, I bought some expensive moisture-wicking socks and walked with them for a few days. Then I was away for almost two weeks, and at one point soon after that they went on their first date.

Their relationship continued to blossom and I learned recently that they got engaged! I have never felt such happiness about blisters as I did when they told me -- I could not have purposefully contrived such a perfect setup.

Still, I think I will keep wearing the expensive socks. I'll figure out another way to help people fall in love.

Enjoying the Spring Weather

2011-03-20T19:45:00.000-04:00

Today the three of us went on a hike together. Our town has a lot of greenways, so we went on one where we got to see a lake in a former quarry and an old cemetery. I don't know how long we were out walking -- probably 2 or 3 hours -- but Vinny did quite well until the end when he got tired.

The weather was beautiful -- sunny, but not too hot. The trees don't have leaves on them yet, but they will soon.

My Little Mathematician

2011-03-19T23:22:00.000-04:00

Vinny loves numbers. (I wonder where he got that from?)

He loves to count. He will just start counting and keep going as high as he can, sometimes with humorous results (e.g., ninety-eight, ninety-nine, ninety-ten, ninety-eleven...). He also loves to count people, or toys, or anything else he can figure to count. When he is upset, I can take advantage of his proclivity for numbers, and calm him down by counting to 100 together.

He loves clocks and timers. I was getting exasperated with him the other morning for wasting time when I was trying to get him ready for school, so I turned on the timer and he suddenly saw it as a challenge to beat the countdown. He is really into telling time, and remarks on the passing of nearly every minute in the car on the way to school. He's also fascinated by the thermometer in the car, and we have nearly daily conversations about the relative heat or cold of a range of temperatures.

His favorite book these days is 26 Letters and 99 Cents, (the 99 cents part, not the letters part). It has pictures of coins (or, as he calls them, "coinks") that add up to the numbers 1 through 99 (skipping quite a few at the end, thank goodness!). From this book he has learned to identify pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, and how the coins add up to various numbers. I swear I have read him this book a countably infinite number of times.

We play games with numbers. We count together, alternating who says the next number, so that one is counting evens and one is counting odds. We find cool number patterns and remark on how cool they are (e.g., "Mama, it's 12:34 -- one two three four!" "Cool! Good observation, buddy!"). He loves to type or lay out a string of digits, and make me say what number it is (e.g., 8537832104 is 8 billion, 537 million, 832 thousand, 104).

It is really fun to enjoy numbers together. I look forward to teaching him how to play Sudoku and Kenken when he is older (games he already wants to play but lacks the skills at this point). I hope he never loses his enthusiasm for math!

Bunk Bed Update

2011-03-14T20:05:00.028-04:00

As I alluded to in the previous post, Vinny's bunk bed finally came. It has been working out great so far.

It is a little big in his very small bedroom. Unfortunately the way the room is configured, the only place to put the bed is right by the door, but the door opens such that it does not interfere. The thing I like about it though, is that even with his door open (as he insists on keeping it at night), he can't see out so that makes it easier to sneak past without disturbing him.

The bed also has a trundle underneath, meaning that there could potentially be room for three children. (I have visions of two of his boy cousins* staying over for a sleepover someday.) However, we have only one mattress at the moment -- he is sleeping on the lower bunk because he is much too young to sleep on the top as of yet.

He's enjoyed it so much that when we first got the bed, we had to pretend that it was nighttime and so he could pretend to sleep in it. And he's been going to bed in his own bed without a fuss, and not even complaining when I don't sit beside his bed for five minutes.

Here's hoping I don't jinx it by saying this, but I am so glad we got the bunk bed for him, because it has made a world of difference at night!

* Either my sisters' sons, or Jeff's sister's sons. Probably not both sets of cousins at the same time, though!

My Poor Baby Boy

2011-03-13T15:05:00.000-04:00

My sweet baby boy has been sick since Friday. He's been running a fever for three days now. He has also been suffering from diarrhea. I got concerned this afternoon when his temperature was still above 100 F despite the fact that he was under the influence of acetaminophen. So I have called the doctor's office and hopefully the nurse will get back to me soon.

But, on the bright side, he has been sleeping very consistently in his own bed, because he finally got his cool new bunk bed* on Tuesday and has been faithfully sleeping in it because it is so cool. He hasn't even considered sleeping in the bed with us despite feeling so sick.

* Best investment EVAR!!!!

Taxing My Patience

2011-03-12T11:42:00.000-05:00

I'm not trying to brag, but I make a lot of money. Despite the fact that I am the only income earner in the household, we are very firmly in the top quintile of household incomes in the United States.

Commensurate with a large income is a large tax burden. A larger percentage of my earnings are taken by income taxes and payroll taxes than were taken when I was a graduate student, for example. But I don't mind -- it's part of my responsibility as a citizen. I benefitted (and still continue to benefit) from others' tax outlays, so it's only fair that I do my part.

I do not understand those who seek to avoid paying their fair share of taxes through the extension of tax cuts and special exemptions for the wealthy. Their avarice only serves to hurt the people around them, and ultimately themselves. Why should programs like Head Start (proven to dramatically improve the future prospects of children in low-income families) be on the chopping block? I am happy to fund programs like that, if for no other reason than that when I'm old, I'd much rather encounter these kids as my doctor or nurse rather than robbing my house for drug money.

It makes me sick to think that some people would prefer to have a larger number in their bank account instead of contributing to the general welfare of their country. Paying taxes is patriotic, and helping those who are less fortunate is our duty.

Thoughts on a Rainy Saturday Afternoon

2011-03-05T18:12:00.000-05:00

In the latest news:

I ordered some new chairs for the dining room. The table is old but serviceable, the chairs -- not so much. Somehow they got sent to Oregon. I don't know how that happened. But the customer service representative set me up with a new shipment.
We bought bunk beds for Vinny from a local furniture store, as a reward and incentive for sleeping in his own room. Today, the delivery guys started putting it together only to discover that it was the wrong bed. They had brought a double bed size bunk bed, not a twin size! So, they had to take it back and reschedule us for delivery on Tuesday. It was going to be a really cool bed, with bunks plus a trundle on the bottom. Luckily, the trundle was the right one so they let us keep it and he is going to be sleeping on that for a few nights. He is pretty excited about it, pretending that it was nighttime several times, so not all is lost. I think he will be excited to stay in his own bed now (definitely a step up from a mattress on the floor).
The toilet in our hallway bathroom stopped working. The tank stopped filling. Jeff successfully replaced the apparatus inside the toilet.
Our kitchen sink faucet broke. The stem unit inside the handle got bent up for some reason. No problem, we could just get a new one, right? Well, our faucet was relatively new, and the store doesn't carry the replacement parts for it. So I ordered it online. The total cost was $25, more than half of which was shipping.
It is raining. A lot. I will be interested to see what the structural engineers say next week about our foundation. The evidence of water seepage will be fresh.

Is this Thing On?

2011-03-03T22:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry, vast blogging audience, that I just up and left you hanging there. February was a long month, even though it was only 28 days. And, I didn't hardly even do anything remotely interesting or significant. It just seemed to never stop. But, here are a few things that have happened:

I found out that we will be getting our Nissan Leaf in May. I am so excited about it!
I test drove a Nissan Leaf over the weekend. I'll post a longer entry about the test drive, but the main thing I was concerned about was whether it had sufficient headroom for a long-torsoed driver such as myself. The good news is, there was room to spare! So I am all set!
The bad news is that we discovered that there is a big leak or crack in the foundation of our house. We have a finished basement, but the leak is in a room that was just a storage room we rarely went into. We did not realize the extent of the problem until we cleaned the house and emptied that room and saw all the nasty mold growing on the wall. Jeff took out the drywall and a friend who is a home inspector came over to assess the damage. It was nasty enough that we have two foundation experts coming next week to give us quotes. Our friend will be there too. It is likely that the estimates will be in the low five-figure range. I am hoping (but seriously doubting) that our homeowner's insurance might pay for some of this.
We paid some people to come and give our house a good cleaning from top to bottom. We were just sick of it being kind of grungy and grimy. The house sparkles now (apart from the nasty part with the water damage). We are going to try to keep it clean, and maybe even hire a maid service to come in regularly as well.
We are having bad luck with plumbing right now. The tank on the back of one of our toilets decided to stop filling. There's either a problem with the pipe that connects to the toilet or with the apparatus inside the toilet, because water just trickles into the tank. Then, the stopper in the bathtub decided to get stuck and not come out. And then, the handle for the cold water in the kitchen sink decided to not turn off fully. It has been a little frustrating, to say the least.
I've been wiped out by some sort of nasty cold or flu bug. I actually had a fever on Tuesday, so I went home from work early and then I stayed home yesterday and today. I am feeling better now and plan to go back to work tomorrow, but I am still not fully recovered.

Well, hopefully I will have the time to write about the test drive. It was a great experience!

Losing 400 lbs

2011-02-01T20:39:00.018-05:00

We have been cleaning our house lately. We finally just got really sick of all the mess, so we started cleaning it out. Jeff joked that our house had lost 400 pounds (thus the title of this post). He could be right: several loads to the recycling center later, our house is starting to look good.

We finally unpacked the last of the boxes we had moved here more than five years ago. I went through a lot of papers and shredded the documents we no longer needed. We also cleaned out closets and piled unwanted clothing into boxes, in preparation for Vinny's school's annual garage sale. In the closet next to the front door, I discovered a lot of things I had forgotten that we had, such as some felt to put on chair bottoms and some markers you can use on windows. That closet is now bare, except for a few coats, and it is also the vacuum cleaner's new home.

A few weeks ago I scrubbed the kitchen floor with a scrub brush, getting all the dirt out of the pits and pores of the vinyl, and it now looks really good. After we finish with all the clutter, we plan to hire somebody to come in and clean the place, from top to bottom. It will be so nice to have a really clean house again, and hopefully after this we will keep it that way.

Humor, Preschooler Style

2011-01-31T22:38:00.000-05:00

Vinny's sense of humor continues to grow and change. I taught him the concept of the knock-knock joke over the summer, and he loves it still. For some reason, his favorite stage from which to tell jokes is the potty. So in the evening, when he is sitting on the potty doing his business, he is also telling me jokes.

Most of his jokes really aren't that funny, except for the fact that he laughs so heartily. For example, while on the potty, the punchline of his knock-knock jokes is often "[X] farted!" which gets pretty old pretty fast. He also repeats the old standards that I taught him, such as "Boo!" "Boo who?" "Don't cry -- it's just a joke!" and "Dwayne the bathtub, I'm dwowning!"

But it can be funny when he tells a surreal, Dada joke, such as "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "Bob!" "Bob who?" "Bob sat on a mushroom!" and its sequel, which culminates in "Bob got off the mushroom and sat on a log!"

Adventures in Stupid Speakers

2011-01-17T23:20:00.000-05:00

Last week, a friend of mine attended a computer science talk and was faced with the ever-ubiquitous Gratuitous Pr0n* Reference (GPR). It made me want to FEMINIST HULK smash something to hear of yet another incident of GPR.

I am not a fan of P..n, to say the least. I find it highly offensive and degrading to women (and to men, as well). The reasons I believe this are long and complicated, but suffice it to say that this is based upon long hours of thinking, and studying of feminist theory, as well as my own ideas about social justice. So when I encounter some jerk bringing a GPR into his talk, it makes me angry. But it also makes me feel small and self-conscious, because I am often only one of a few or even the only woman in the room. It reminds everyone that in our society, women are there for the pleasure of men, and makes them more conscious of the fact that I am a woman.

But even if you disagree with my assessment of P..n, there are a myriad of other reasons why incorporating a GPR into your talk is inappropriate. Here are a few:

As the number of people in the audience grows, you are likely speaking to more and more survivors of sexual assault. Survivors of sexual assault are often triggered by GPRs. Why risk triggering someone's post-traumatic stress disorder for a cheap laugh? There are plenty of other ways to get your point across.**
The best comedians are the ones who talk about humorous situations and use clever wordplay instead of degrading other people. P..n jokes generally boil down to a joke about exploiting other people, which is not a funny topic.***
P..n is a controversial topic. Since the topic of your presentation is computer science, why mention something that is such a hot button for so many people? There are plenty of controversial views that I hold, such as my disbelief in a deity, but since I want my audience to learn about my topic and enjoy it as much as I do, I don't make jokes about stupid Christians or whatever. (Not only for that reason, but also because I don't think Christians are generally stupid -- they're just mistaken about a particular topic -- and I respect believers as fellow human beings so I find jokes insulting others' intelligence disdainful.)

I've often been accused of being "oversensitive." The problem here is not that I (or my friend) am oversensitive -- it's that others are not sensitive enough. It would be nice if we could just go to work and be scientists instead of having to endure all this crap.

* This word altered to protect my blog from purveyors of said items.

** If you can't think of alternatives, you are seriously lacking in imagination and I feel quite sorry for you.

*** It is the same reason that jokes about minorities, the disabled, and other marginalized people are not funny. But somehow, when it's about p..n, this no longer applies in many people's minds.

My Sad, Sad Sniffer

2011-01-14T22:40:00.000-05:00

When I learned about the five senses as a child, I remember comparing the relative enjoyment I derived from each one. I remember thinking that as much as I enjoyed them all, I would miss my sense of smell the least.

That assertion is being tested in my life today. You see, I have mostly lost my sense of smell.

It's not being blocked by nasal congestion. I can breathe just fine. But, when I inhale, my sniffer fails to register some portion of the scents in the air.

It has been a gradual process, but over time, I have been able to smell less and less. I first noticed that I could not smell diaper odors very well when Vinny was still in diapers, but I just attributed it to olfactory adaptation. Instead, I am afraid I am developing anosmia.

The severity of my affliction was underscored the other day when I started to eat some leftovers. They smelled fine to me, but when I took a bite, I could tell that something was not quite right. They tasted a little bitter. So I asked Jeff to check it for me. One whiff and disgusted fanning of his nose later, he informed me that the food smelled so rotten that there was no way it could have even made it into his mouth. Thank goodness he was there to save me from certain food poisoning!

It's interesting, because there are lots of things I can still smell. Skunk, body odor, hydrogen sulfide, and a host of other unpleasant odors are still quite vivid to me. I can also smell some pleasant scents such as citrus, cinnamon, baking bread, and lavender. I can smell some of the components of eucalyptus, and have relearned how to identify it. And, on the bright side, I am almost completely immune to the smell of urine (I can detect that there is a scent but I can't tell what it is).* But whatever was rotten in that food, I completely missed it, and this frightens me greatly. Had I been alone the other day, I might have eaten those leftovers and made myself quite sick.** And I probably would have just thought I had the flu or something, since that food had only been in the fridge for 2 or 3 days.

Other than that, though, the loss of my sense of smell has not been that traumatic. So, maybe I knew what I was talking about.

* The other day I could smell something on Vinny's sleeper, and when I asked him about it he said he had dribbled a little urine on it. So, I can detect urine but it no longer has that unpleasant, acrid smell I recall from the past.

** Maybe I need a personal food taster!

Adventures in Calendars

2011-01-12T22:29:00.149-05:00

Yesterday I was talking about the fact that sufficient time has elapsed from the arbitrarily set starting point of our calendar system such that the date was filled with ones. I have always been very interested in numbers, and starting when I was about Vinny's age, calendars were a big obsession. I had my own perpetual calendar which I regularly studied. I pored over it, seeking patterns in the days and months -- for example, my sister's birthday in April predicted the day of the week upon which both my September birthday and Christmas would subsequently fall.

That's why, when I saw the following on a Facebook friend's status, I had to respond:

I'm not superstitious, but this year July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years. This is called money bags. So, copy this to your status and money will arrive within 4 days. Based on Chinese Feng Shui. The one who does not copy.....will be without money.

This July will indeed have five Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, but this is a frequent occurrence -- once every seven years, on average.

If you think about it, you can see why. The reason July will have five Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays is because the month will start on a Friday this year. The day of the week July starts on is determined by what day January 1 is and whether it is a leap year. There are fourteen unique calendars -- the year can start on one of seven days, and times two because it could be a regular year or a leap year.

There are 365 days in a (non-leap) year. A week consists of seven days, so there are 365/7 = 52 weeks plus one day in a year. This means that the next year begins one day of the week later than the current year. The year that follows a leap year begins two days later. So, this year (2011) began on a Saturday, next year (2012, leap year) begins on a Sunday, and the year after that (2013) begins on a Tuesday.

Non-leap years that begin on Saturday produce Julys with five three-day weekends. So do leap years that begin on Friday (because that extra day occurs before July). Thus there are two out of the fourteen possible calendars that exhibit this phenomenon.

But at what frequency do these calendars occur? After all, there could be some calendars that occur more frequently than others. Obviously, leap calendars are less frequent than regular calendars, but all leap and regular calendars occur with the same frequency as their counterparts. In fact, there is a 28-year calendar cycle that is easily generated.

Let's code the days of the week as follows: Sunday = 0, Monday = 1, Tuesday = 2, Wednesday = 3, Thursday = 4, Friday = 5, Saturday = 6. We can denote the year starting with a given day of the week with the corresponding number.

If there were no leap years, the sequence would look like this:
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...

However, there are leap years, so the sequence gets interrupted once every four years. Let's denote leap years with a prime (') and the color red:
0, 1, 2, 3', 5, 6, 0, 1', 3, 4, 5, 6', 1, 2, 3, 4', 6, 0, 1, 2', 4, 5, 6, 0', 2, 3, 4, 5'
(at this point we start over with 0, 1, 2...)

If you count it up, there are three of each of the years 0 to 6 in this 28-year span, and one of each leap year. So, if we count up the number of sixes and five-primes in the sequence (years with five three-day weekends in July), we get four out of 28, or one in seven.

So, I'm sorry, Facebook friend, but this phenomenon occurs on average once out of every 7 years, more than 100 times more frequently than you have asserted. Your post will be as effective as all the other forms of feng shui -- in other words, completely ineffective. But, at least it gave me something interesting to write about!

Happy 1/11/11!

2011-01-11T23:11:00.009-05:00

It is a pretty exciting day on the calendar today for those of us who love numbers -- all 1's (and notice my time stamp -- 11:11 pm). I enjoy patterns like this even though the only meaning is that sufficient time has elapsed since the arbitrary starting date of our calendar system such that there are a lot of ones in the date.

In other news, we have had a lot of snow lately (where by "a lot of snow" I mean about three inches). This has caused sufficient havoc that they even closed my workplace on Monday, and Vinny's school has been out for three days this week (another snow day tomorrow). It was Vinny's snack day tomorrow, and I baked up some blueberry-banana muffins for school, which I now have to do something with since school was cancelled.

2010-12-28T09:44:00.001-05:00

Season's Greetings to all! This is a test message from my cell phone.

The Skeptic and Santa Claus

2010-12-22T21:28:00.004-05:00

Vinny is really excited about the upcoming visit of Santa Claus. I am enjoying his excitement and enthusiasm.

After he was born, I had some reservations about Santa. I enjoyed the tradition of Christmas stockings filled with gifts. But I was unsure how to handle the existence (or non-existence) of Santa Claus. I did not want to lie to my child, after all. On the other hand, I recalled a story about my parents telling my older sister that Santa was not real -- "I don't want to know that!" she replied. So being truthful wasn't all it was cracked up to be, either.

I remembered from reading "Ask Marilyn" years ago that she told her kids that Santa represented holiday joy and love, but was not real, and they would all pretend to believe in him. I thought that was probably how I would handle it, until I read the book Parenting Beyond Belief by Dale McGowan.

In the book, they had dueling articles about whether a freethinking family should endorse or eschew the Santa legend with their children. After reading them both, I was convinced of the wisdom of teaching my child about Santa, to give him an early lesson in reasoning.*

Santa, you see, has a number of parallels with the another supernatural peeping-Tom myth that persists well past childhood in the majority of the American population. They are both watching and judging you. They both have big white beards. If you are good, you will be rewarded. Whatever you get, you deserved -- anything lacking is your fault. So puzzling through the Santa myth is just a dry run for puzzling through the God myth. The same logic refutes both.

I've already gotten some skeptical questions about Santa from Vinny. "How does he go to all those houses?" I was asked just the other day. "Some people say his sleigh is magic," I replied. "What do you think of that?"

For now, that was an acceptable answer to his question. But at some point, says McGowan, the desire to know the truth about Santa will outweigh your child's desire to believe in Santa. The trick is to allow your child to reason through it on his own, and to never lie to him when he asks direct questions. That's why, following McGowan's lead, I deflected with "some people say," and allowed him to assess the validity of the answer.

Someday, he will puzzle it all out himself. He will realize that Santa and his parents use the same wrapping paper, and have the same handwriting. He will fathom the sheer numbers of houses Santa allegedly serves, and deduce that it is impossible. He will no longer believe in magic. And he will put it all together, decide that the benefits of knowing the truth outweigh the benefits of living in denial, and stop believing in Santa. And when he makes this decision, it will feel good, and not be disappointing, because he figured it out himself.

And I will be proud of my little skeptic, and feel confident that he will use his intellect to dismantle other myths he's exposed to (not just higher powers, but myths about gender, race, politics, relationships, himself, etc.).

* Read McGowan's Santa article here, and then buy the book to read the rest!

Adventures in Speaking Too Soon

2010-12-20T09:01:00.000-05:00

Alas, I spoke too soon in the previous post. He was able to sleep on his own for about a week but now we're back to square one. Sigh. I know it can't last forever -- if nothing else, he'll become a teenager and not want anything to do with us at some point. But it sure is frustrating.

Adventures in Migraines

2010-12-11T10:20:00.000-05:00

I can't say that I am a fan of migraines, but the last one I had actually resulted in something good.

I've been getting them with more and more frequency, probably 3 times a month over the past couple of months, which has been pretty unpleasant to say the least. I went to the doctor, and she has scheduled me for a CAT scan to make sure I don't have a tumor or something, but otherwise I just have to collect information and try to figure out any kind of pattern to them.

On Wednesday night, I had a really, really painful one. It is my job to put Vinny to bed every night. Lately he has been too scared to fall asleep on his own, because developmentally he has gotten to the stage where he knows something about death and is afraid of being alone. So I have sat there and played on Melvin (the tiniest, babiest computer) until he falls asleep -- thus the recent spate of prolific postings on this blog. But on Wednesday, my head just hurt way too much to be able to do that. And of course, that evening he was particularly hyper and not ready to fall asleep at bedtime. I was getting angry and because I was so frustrated and in so much pain. So I went downstairs to Jeff and asked him to help me. Jeff went upstairs and lay down the law, telling Vinny that Mama was going to bed because her head hurt really badly, and that Vinny could goof off and play if he wanted to, he just had to stay in his room. There was some crying, but Vinny did it.

The next morning, Vinny pointed out to me that he had been promised a prize for falling asleep all by himself and staying in his bed all night. (This prize had been dangled in front of him after he returned from that week at Grandpa and Grandma's, where he had fallen asleep by himself with no problems, in an attempt to convince him to do the same thing here, but to no avail at the time.) Upon confirming what had happened that night with Jeff, I agreed and awarded him the prize: sunglasses with blinking blue lights on the sides (one of the best pieces of swag we picked up at the conference). Then I told him if he did it again that evening, he would get another fantastic prize. The next morning, he was rewarded with another piece of light-up swag. And yesterday I told him if he did it for the next two nights he would get yet another prize. Last night was a success, and I anticipate tonight will be too.

I think he'll be falling asleep on his own for the foreseeable future, which is a great thing! So for perhaps the first time ever, something good came out of a migraine!

Winter Weather

2010-12-07T21:28:00.000-05:00

It has been pretty cold here lately! Why, today I don't think the temperature rose above freezing. I excitedly wore several layers of clothes today.

It doesn't get quite this cold that often here in Tennessee. The weather (although not the complete lack of snow) reminds me of my days in Illinois.

Speaking of Illinois, when I told Vinny that one of his cousins lives in Illinois, he suggested that his cousin actually lives in "Billinois" and just laughed like it was the most hilarious thing ever. Then I suggested that Vinny lived in "Sillynois" and laughed a bit myself (although Vinny did not find that as humorous as his own joke). I am still trying to figure out the four-year-old sense of humor. So far it seems to me that watching him laugh is about the funniest part of his jokes.

Fun with Creative Play

2010-12-05T20:57:00.000-05:00

Vinny's been really into creative play these days, which I really love. He has a great imagination and it is so fun to see what he comes up with.

Tonight, he was C3PO and Jeff was R2D2, and when I joined in the play I was dubbed Darth Vader. Luckily, I didn't have to behave like Darth Vader particularly, and all our conflicts were solved with a pizza party. If only it were that easy in real life!

Computers and Me (Part 2)

2010-12-04T23:02:00.021-05:00

In that first semester of grad school, I suddenly realized that I had a lot of work to do to catch up to all these people with computer science bachelors degrees. I was a pretty good programmer for a physicist ("for a physicist" being the operative phrase) -- but the thing is, there is so much more to computer science than just programming. It was pretty tough going, but with help from friends and my very patient adviser, I eventually learned everything I needed to know to get that doctorate.

I was more on the math side of things than the programming or hardware side through my graduate career. (Thus the title of this blog, started in my final semester of graduate school.) I resisted learning any more of the technical side than I needed to, but I knew I needed to learn more. But I was scared -- it all seemed so complicated, and to admit that I didn't know something was a big risk -- what if I failed at learning it?

I took a research assistantship at the supercomputing center, which turned out to be the best thing I ever did careerwise. I got used to working with big supercomputers and started to feel a lot more comfortable programming in parallel. This allowed me to do the computing I needed to do for my dissertation, which could not have been done on anything smaller than a supercomputer. It was a risk I took that paid off many times over.

In my postdoc, I learned a lot more about programming and designing scalable parallel algorithms, which was awesome, but I was still kind of light on the hardware side when I started my current job. I had hoped to stay that way but quickly realized that I was on the side of things where I actually had some input into the design of the next-generation leadership supercomputer. (Okay, very little input, but more than I had ever had.) So instead of just not having an opinion, I had to actually start thinking about computer architecture and how it impacts the scalability of parallel algorithms.

But I really didn't know enough about computer architecture to have a particularly valid or useful opinion. So, when I was asked to help give a workshop on using our machines, I volunteered myself for the part where we explained the machine architecture. I then learned Computer Architecture 101 (courtesy of Wikipedia) and translated what I had learned into a presentation for a lay audience. This helped me to understand computer architecture in a way that I had never understood before. Suddenly all those discussions about next-generation machines made a lot more sense. And I could throw around computer hardware jargon with the best of them.

Today, I am pretty sure that I have no interest in designing computer hardware, but I am interested in how the components fit together and how this relates to algorithms for high-performance computing. I am really happy in my current job because I now have just enough knowledge of computer architecture to understand what is going on.

Computers and Me (Part 1)

2010-12-03T22:23:00.061-05:00

I have always loved computers, as long as I remember. I remember my dad bringing home a computer when I was very young, and using a modem (which was a cradle for the rotary phone's handset) for something-or-other.

The summers between my early elementary school years I took some computer science classes for kids. We programmed in BASIC on some mainframes at the university. One of my teachers was a woman, but I don't remember the gender makeup of the class.

I do remember being the only girl in the electrical engineering class I took the next year, though. I was self-conscious about it because I was just learning about gender roles and the fact that my interests were not typical for those with a matching 23rd pair of chromosomes. I think I was a bit overwhelmed by the boys in the class, but I did learn a lot about resistors and capacitors and other interesting things.

When I was nine, we got our own home computer. It had two floppy disk drives, no hard drive, and a monochrome (amber) monitor. You had to boot it from the A drive. It had BASIC so I was able to write some programs, just like I had done in my computer science classes.

In junior high, I was interested in joining the computer club, but I was intimidated by the boys in my class and did not join. They weren't just loud and boisterous; they actually made fun of me for wanting to join the computer club, urging me to return to the kitchen where I belonged. So it was not a welcoming or safe space for me and I stayed away.

I went to a math, science, and technology magnet school for high school. In my math class my sophomore year, we wrote programs in Quick Basic, so no line numbers were necessary. I remember for our final exam we had to write a code that would determine whether the number you input was prime, and that I wrote a program to do this in no time flat, while the rest of the class was struggling with it. (Of course, the method I used, namely counting by odd numbers and testing whether the number was divisible by any odd number from 3 to the square-root of the number in question, is not scalable for large numbers, but that is beyond the scope of this post.)

There was an advanced computer science course offered, but at the time I had found that I had a great interest in chemistry, so I took AP Chemistry instead of computer science. I enjoyed playing on our computer at home, but my formal computing education waited until college.

In college, I took a class on FORTRAN for engineers. It was really easy and I aced the programming projects and the exams. At that time I was majoring in chemical engineering, but I soon switched to physics.

I thought I wanted to be an experimental scientist until I did a summer internship simulating physics on a computer. At that point I discovered where my heart really was! So I did a concentration in computational physics for my major. To do that concentration, I took a class on numerical methods, and aced it. It was in that class that I got the first inkling that maybe I could go into computer science. I got a problem set back with a 100% grade and a personal note from the professor: "Have you considered graduate school in computer science? I would love to have a student like you!"

I took an extra year to complete my undergrad and took some additional CS classes that final year. I was overjoyed to discover that I was admitted to the institution from which I eventually earned my Ph.D. some seven years later.

(Stay tuned for Part 2!)

Debugging in Parallel

2010-12-02T21:31:00.060-05:00

Sometimes* when you write a computer program, there are bugs in it. Some of those bugs can be easy to catch (e.g., I forgot to put a semicolon at the end of line 67 and my code won't compile), while others are not. There are different types of bugs, too -- memory errors that cause a segmentation fault, typos that might cause one variable to be updated instead of another, and errors in your algorithm, to name a few. Each of them is uniquely challenging to find and fix.

But when we add an additional layer of complexity to a code by making it run in parallel, the difficulty of finding and fixing bugs goes up by several orders of magnitude. The most insidious of bugs will appear only at high process counts, or irregularly. How then can we find out where our code is going wrong?

A classic method of finding bugs is by inserting print statements in the code. Using the print statements and running the code, we can follow a sort of bisection algorithm to determine where things go bad. Typically we insert a few print statements at the first pass, and then further hone down to the point where the error occurs with several subsequent runs. But this is highly time consuming, and produces a lot of excess data. I for one would hate to insert all those print statements in a complicated code, not to mention sift through the output of print statement debugging across 200,000 processes. It can take weeks to find a bug in this way, especially if you have to wait for a batch system to run your jobs.

The best solution is to use a debugger. Using a debugger, you can pinpoint the exact line at which the bug occurs in a single trial (for bugs such as segmentation faults). And you can insert break points around areas of the code you suspect are faulty, and examine the contents of the variables. You can also step through the code slowly and figure out how x came to equal 27 instead of 32 (for example).

Parallel debuggers exist, and do scale up to hundreds of thousands of processes. Of course, these are commercial products but I'm guessing you don't have a 200K-core supercomputer in your basement. Most supercomputing centers have a license for a commercial debugger such as Allinea DDT or TotalView. Both of these are great products that will help you to find your bugs quickly and relatively painlessly. And if you stubbornly insist on not using a commercial product, most mpirun or mpiexec commands allow you to attach your favorite free debugger to your parallel execution.

Do you think it is too hard to learn to use a debugger, that by the time you do learn it you could have already found that bug and moved on to something else? Invest in your future and learn to use a debugger anyhow! Let me tell you the sad, sad story of a graduate student I knew quite well.

This graduate student felt that by the time he/she learned to use a debugger, that final bug sitting between the student and graduation would have been found and fixed. Because, of course, that was the final bug. He/she said this, bug after bug after bug. Looking back, this person realized that by investing a day learning to use a debugger, he/she could have graduated (and started earning for-real money instead of measly graduate student stipends) about six months earlier.

Don't be like that graduate student. Learn to use a debugger and stop wasting your time!

* Actually, pretty much every time you write anything more complicated than "Hello, world!"

Running Me Ragged

2010-12-01T21:31:00.000-05:00

So, today my Mean Running Coach* took me on a route that was over 5 miles. This is farther than I have ever run before. I hasten to add that I probably ran half of it at most -- but we did complete the whole thing in maybe an hour and a quarter, which is pretty respectable.

But oh, was it painful! The good thing is, it will be a lot easier to do on Friday. It is amazing how the body gets stronger so quickly.

* She is actually really nice and one of my dearest friends at work.

Thanksgiving Adventures

2010-11-30T21:28:00.000-05:00

We had a good holiday weekend. I stayed home on Wednesday so that I could cook for our Thanksgiving dinner. I went grocery shopping and made an apple pie and cranberry sauce that day.

Then on Thursday morning I put the turkey plus some carrots, parsnips, and the appropriate herbs and spices in our super-deluxe oven on the slow-cook setting before we left for a Thanksgiving-day race. The entire family participated in a fun run, and Vinny got a medal upon completion of the race. We headed back home and we continued cooking: rolls (made from my favorite leftover oatmeal bread recipe), corn pudding, fresh beets and greens, macaroni and cheese for Vinny, and Jeff's broccoli casserole.

The turkey was delicious -- very moist and falling off the bone. I'd never tried parsnips before but I liked them. I ate all the beets because I am the only family member who actually likes them, but Jeff tried some of the beet greens and thought they were good. Vinny feasted on macaroni and cheese, rolls, and cranberry sauce. We all enjoyed the pie for dessert, but especially Vinny, because it was an "X" pie (lattice top).

My dad and bonus mom arrived on Friday and we enjoyed some of their leftovers and ours, plus Italian roasted pork loin, for dinner. They came so that we could go to a football game together on Saturday -- the annual Kentucky vs. Tennessee game, which is always held on Thanksgiving and which Kentucky has consistently lost for 26 years in a row now.

On Saturday morning we got decked out in layers of clothing (blue of course!) and headed to the game. We had a pretty good view of the field despite being near the top of the stadium. The stadium was filled with a surprisingly high proportion of people wearing blue. It wasn't half, but it was more than a third. We had a good time even though our team lost.

Dad and Marvis left after we had dinner. On Sunday we went to the same Christmas tree farm that we went to last year, and cut down a tree. We are slowly decorating it -- I got the ornaments and lights down from the attic last night, and we have put a few strands of lights on it as a reward for good behavior in everybody's favorite four-year-old. Tonight I plan to make a 25-link paper chain like I did last year for him, to illustrate the countdown to Christmas.

My Little Nerd in Training

2010-11-24T20:41:00.000-05:00

So, while Vinny was staying with his grandparents, my dad was walking with him through a parking lot, where Vinny proceeded to rattle off the make and model of every single car. If he could identify cars, Dad thought, then surely he could learn to identify trees too. So that week, Dad helped Vinny to create a leaf collection and learn all the leaves.

There are a couple dozen different leaves in that book, and Vinny knows them all. He can flip through the book and rattle them all off, but also he can identify them out of order or even outside of the book. He took the leaf collection book to school and showed it during show and tell. His teacher was amazed by his leaf knowledge, and so am I. I think that at this point, he can identify more leaves than I can. The mind of a four-year-old is like a sponge!

Travel and Home Again

2010-11-22T23:33:00.000-05:00

We took Vinny to his Grandparents' house on the Wednesday before we left for the conference, because we wanted to take a CPR/First Aid class on Thursday. We did, and are now both certified in CPR and First Aid, at least for the next year.

We left on Saturday, driving to New Orleans. We spent one night in a beautiful new hotel for a bargain price (the gubmint rate, since I was on business travel!) before arriving mid-afternoon.

Jeff had a great time in New Orleans -- he explored the French Quarter and went on a cemetery tour. I spent the majority of my waking hours in the convention center, although I did get a chance for an evening beignet excursion to Cafe du Monde, and to go out to dinner one night with my boss and his wife (and Jeff too), and another night with Jeff alone. I tried a lot of new foods, including rabbit, which tastes like a cross between chicken and pork.

Finally the conference was over, and before leaving New Orleans, we went on a swamp tour. We saw lots of alligators and other creatures, and we got to hold a baby alligator. Then we started driving.

We stayed in that same hotel at the same gubmint rate -- unfortunately I suffered a migraine when we got out of the car for dinner, so Jeff made the executive decision to stop. We arrived home on Saturday evening -- only to get up early the next morning to go pick up Vinny.

We spent the afternoon with Jeff's sister and brother-in-law, allowing Vinny to play with his cousins. It was a lot of fun, especially for Vinny, but we had to leave earlier than we would have liked, to make it home at a decent hour. I was terrified that the migraine would make a reappearance, but luckily I remained migraine-free. This morning marked the return to our regular schedule -- Vinny to school and me to work.

Prepping for the Conference

2010-11-09T19:08:00.000-05:00

Remember last November, when I was the signage chair for a major conference in my field, and how exhausted and burned out I was, and how I said I wasn't going to do anything for the conference this year?

Yeah. Uh, so, I didn't exactly keep my promise to myself there. I'm not doing anything as hard or involved as that, but I am one of the judges for a student competition, a speaker for the part of the program aimed at attracting minorities to the field, and I am presenting a session (along with two of my colleagues) at the conference. Also, I was asked to help some students who won a prestigious fellowship find their way around the conference. (I was also told I should use this as an opportunity to recruit shamelessly for my employer, so I have them all set to meet some Important People from my workplace.)

The conference is in New Orleans, which is just close enough to drive to (although far enough that it is still a big trip). Jeff is going with me, and we are once again leaving Vinny with Grandma and Grandpa, who were kind enough to look after him once again. Unfortunately, their house is in the opposite direction that we need to go, making the trip about six hours longer each way (since we have to go there and back once each way). But I think Vinny will have a good time, and so will Jeff, exploring the city.

Electric Car Update

2010-11-08T22:08:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I got an in-home inspection to determine whether I was eligible for a free charging dock for my Nissan Leaf. And it turns out, I am! So, that's $1500 that I don't have to spend to install a charger.

The charger is at the same high voltage level as the plug that connects to your range or your dryer, and it takes about 8 hours to charge the car from 0% to a full battery. Using a regular wall plug, it would take 18 hours. Using a fast 400-Volt charger, it takes about 30 minutes to charge from empty to about 80%, but that's not what they install at your house.

It'll cost me a dollar at most to fully charge my battery. My employer is installing special charging stations at work, so I may charge even less than that at home.

And I am now able to order my Nissan Leaf! I am really excited about it. I talked to the dealership last week. The good news is, they are not tacking anything onto the price above the MSRP. The bad news is, I'm not sure when the car is arriving. Depending on when I get it, I have to make different financing plans. I'll be eligible for a $7500 tax rebate, but if it comes after January 1, then I'll have to wait a while before I get my money back, and the car payment for a (roughly) $35K car is not cheap.

So, I have to talk to the salesman and find out when it arrives. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will be December 31 or earlier.

The Solution for Sweet Potatoes

2010-11-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

So, our CSA is over, but we still had a bunch of sweet potatoes left from it. I was trying to figure out what to do with all those sweet potatoes, so I turned to my trusty cookbook, The Joy of Cooking. Imagine my delight when I saw a recipe called "Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew." And it got bonus points because it called for zucchini too!

In addition to using ingredients I had too much of, it sounded like an interesting combination of flavors. It calls for bell peppers, jalapenos, ginger, and garlic, sauteed in peanut oil (I substituted sunflower oil). Then you add chili powder, cumin, and red pepper flakes to that, before stirring in the sweet potatoes, some tomato paste, and enough water to cover the veggies. You let it simmer for 45 minutes while you cook up some ground beef or turkey, which you add after the simmering, along with the cut-up zucchini. The final step is to combine some of the stew liquid with some peanut butter, and then stir that into the stew and simmer. You can eat it plain, or over couscous or rice.

I made it last weekend, and boy, was it ever delicious! It was kind of spicy but not too bad for me, especially with the couscous. We liked it so much that I'm making a double recipe of it right now, and we're going to freeze some of it for later. Thank you, Joy of Cooking, for this recipe!

New Shoes!

2010-11-02T20:36:00.016-04:00

This past weekend, I got some new running shoes. I realized, when I was stretching before the night race early last month, that the bottoms of my shoes were so worn out that they were slick! So I went on Saturday and bought a new pair of shoes.

My old ones were okay, but they rubbed a little too much on my little toes, so I got a new pair that was wider in the foot. The problem is that they are also wider in the heel which makes me feel a little like my foot is going to come out of the shoe, unless I tie them in a special way, the runner's tie. (By the way, can I just say, that website is cool and there is some awesome math behind shoelaces and tying knots/bows! Also, there are some really interesting ways to lace up your shoes there.)

Anyhow, I'll let you know how they work out for me.

Sequels

2010-11-01T22:28:00.001-04:00

So, I recently signed up for a free month's trial of Netflix, with streaming video that we can get on our Wii or on our computers. So far I am enjoying it a lot, but it has prompted us to discuss movies a lot.

One thing we were thinking about is sequels, how they are pretty much never as good as the first movie, with a few notable exceptions. The sequel has to be substantially different from the original in order to be any good -- it can't just be a rehash of the same plot, as so many sequels inevitably are. It's like trying to repeat the same experience again, and it just can't be done.

It's kind of the same way in life, too -- the novelty of an experience is part of the experience, and a repeat performance lacks that novelty. Sequel-makers can't be blamed for trying, I guess, but at the same time they should know it will never work.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

2010-10-31T16:20:00.000-04:00

EcoGeoFemme is hosting the November Scientiae carnival, and asked us to write about the best and worst parts of our lives as scientists. Generally I love my job and my life, but there are definitely superlative aspects of all of it.

The best thing about my job is that I enjoy what I'm doing, it intellectually stimulates me, and it allows me to live a lifestyle that is (mostly) conducive to my happiness. The big fat paycheck, flexible schedule, and cushy benefits are the top three benefits that I enjoy outside of the workplace.

The worst thing about my job is that it can take over my life. You may recall me grousing starting in June and going through September about how much I needed a vacation. This past summer, I bit off way more than I could chew, and then somehow had to swallow it all down anyway. I was having trouble keeping it together every day, because of the stress, and because I was unable to get away from it all, even for a day. Lesson learned. Don't do that again!

Anyhow, I have taken on a new role at work, as I indicated a few months ago, which is postdoc supervisor. It is (mostly) a lot of fun, but just for some added hilarity, I will tell you about some of the best and worst moments of that!

We are trying to fill a couple more slots (Anybody wanna be a computational science postdoc? Lemme know!) and I have been doing some recruiting, interviewing, and hiring, and there have been some... interesting times. Let me tell you about one of the most special of all snowflakes that we interviewed.

I had the privilege (?) of hosting him, and got him all to myself for an hour first thing in the morning. We were engaged in some small talk, because we had already run out of technical things to talk about, when he asked me what the weather was like in the winter. I told him that the winters were mild, and he breathed a sigh of relief, because he'd had to quit his postdoc in a Cold Northern State because he couldn't stand the weather and he hated all the deadlines.

At this point, the interview was already over, because a) he had not put this postdoc on his CV and b) we have lots of deadlines. Unfortunately it was not yet 10:00 am. But I am polite, and instead of sending him on his way to the airport, let him complete the day.

He sent me a thank-you email talking about how awesome he was and what a
perfect fit he was for the position (fair enough, everybody does that). But then he sent me more emails... and more emails... culminating in one that literally asked if he could have the job.

At this point, I sent him a message that anyone with at least one-tenth of a social skill would recognize as being of the "Dear John" variety. I even wished him well on his career! Evidently he lacked that fraction of a social skill, because he did not get the message. Upon advice from other colleagues with more experience in hiring people, I had the recruiter send him a rejection letter.

Then things started getting ugly. He sent me a personal nastygram, and then another nastygram about the mean hiring manager who had made this decision (which he evidently did not realize was me), but I was expecting this blowback and did not reply. (I'm not sure in what universe insulting or badmouthing the person you want to give you a job is a good idea.) I thought all had calmed down until a month later when he sent an email to a colleague of mine in a completely different division who did not know him but who shared the same alma mater, asking him to persuade me to hire him. My colleague said he could not do that, and told the guy to give up, which I believe he has.

Anyhow, that was an interesting time, and then when we interviewed the next candidate, that person was like a breath of fresh air. We made him an offer but sadly he turned us down. Ah well, it's all part of the job!

My Poor Sad Head

2010-10-25T20:09:00.008-04:00

Last Sunday, we decided to go on a hike with my dad and bonus mom. It was all great until about five minutes in, when I realized that I was beginning to see the signs of a migraine. Sure enough, my vision went bad and when it returned, the pain began. We were still hiking at that point, because I didn't want a little headache to ruin everyone's fun (including my own). The trail was beautiful and the weather was perfect; the company was great too. I went home afterwards and slept a bit, but and it got a little better for a while, but the next day, I just felt miserable. I went to work but only survived a half day, and came home and slept most of the rest of the day away. I felt better on Tuesday but I did not begin to feel like myself until Wednesday.

I'm glad to be feeling better, but I am getting concerned because I have had several migraines over the past month, which is unusual for me. I wish I knew what exactly triggered it and I'd quit doing that!

Partying and Partying

2010-10-24T17:09:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of the month, we held a family party for Vinny's birthday, just the three of us. Then, when my dad and bonus mom came last weekend, we celebrated again. Then yesterday, we had Vinny's big birthday party to which we invited his class from school and many other friends. And then in the evening, we celebrated his birthday again with Jeff's parents, who drove down for the weekend.

That's four parties for one little boy! I joked that it was one party per year old, but that is not a scalable tradition to keep up.

Humor

2010-10-18T22:21:00.031-04:00

I came up with a pretty funny joke on Friday, and I was actually fairly proud of myself. Vinny and I had been talking about his shoes, and how he has to pull the tongue of his shoes up before he straps the velcro straps. I pointed out how silly it was that shoes have a tongue and people have tongues too. Then I asked him,
"Vinny, do you have a tongue?"
"Yes, I have a tongue. It's in my mouth."
"That's silly!" I said. "I thought only shoes have tongues!"

This led to some more similarly structured jokes:
"Vinny, do you have any ears?"
"Yes, I have two ears, here and here."
"That's silly! I thought only corn has ears!"

and punchlines
"I thought only tables have legs!"
"I thought only potatoes have eyes!"
etc.

Others I thought of include:

Bread has heels
Roads have shoulders
Cows have calves
Macaroni has elbows
Roses have hips

I'm sure there are more out there. Anybody?

Oh, Hi!

2010-10-16T12:51:00.051-04:00

I've been a little bit busy lately! So busy that I failed to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of my beloved son (that was October 5), or discuss the family party that we held for him, or talk about the student who started working with me at the beginning of the month, or the vacation I've taken for the past week. I'll try to remedy that right now:

I can hardly believe that Vinny is 4. He is such an amazing little boy and I am so glad he came into my life four years ago. Every day I love him more and more, as if that is even possible.
Since his birthday was on a Tuesday, we held a family celebration the Sunday before, just the three of us. Vinny's aunt and cousin had a little online video chat with him for his birthday. We ate homemade pizza and a Dora the Explorer cake for his birthday dinner (more on that cake later). He got lots of great presents, including a remote controlled car; Lego Rock Band plus a guitar, drum set, and microphone for the game; and a fun set of gears that you can put together on interlocking backing. He was positively thrilled with the whole thing.
He had requested a Dora cake for his birthday. I said okay, I would make him a Dora cake. Jeff bought a Dora cake pan and I baked the cake. That was the easy part. The hard part was decorating it. You need 10 different colors for decorating Dora. For example, she has light brown eyes, but dark brown hair. Furthermore, she has the whites of her eyes, the light brown iris, the black pupil, and a little dot of white in her eyes. She also has a bracelet that has light blue, dark blue, and yellow beads in it. Luckily I bought some sort of frosting mix that was probably actually some amalgam of petrochemicals. I mixed up all the ten different colors of frosting in ten different bowls, but I was having a lot of trouble with doing everything I had to do to follow the directions. I had to change out frosting colors, which was an arduous process, especially because I had only one tip of each kind that was required. A lot of times I just had to do one or two little tiny things and then I had to move on to the next color (for example, red was used only for Map's mouth and nothing else!). By the end I was going so nuts that Dora's eyes and hair were the same color, and furthermore, she did not have a pupil, not to mention that glimmer in her eyes. And she evidently forgot to put her bracelet on, because even though I had mixed the blue colors, I did not use them because if I had, I would have completely lost any shred of sanity I had at that point. I had allowed myself two hours to decorate Dora; it ended up taking five!
I have a student working with me who worked with me the summer before last. He has a prestigious fellowship and worked with me the other summer on something completely unrelated to his research. He asked me if he could come back and I could help him with something that he's doing for his research. I said "of course" and the rest is history. He's a really smart dude and easy to work with. He is close to graduation, so he asked me to write him some letters of recommendation for jobs. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way we can hire him at my workplace.
Last weekend, we went to Memphis. We saw the children's museum, which Vinny loved. They had this wind tunnel with a model airplane in it, and you could turn the fans on to create the wind, then operate some levers which would operate the flaps on the airplane and lift it into the air. He absolutely loved that wind tunnel because it had fans! He was talking about the "fan tunnel" for days. We also went to a place called Incredible Pizza, which was a pizza buffet plus arcade games and also larger games such as miniature bowling and go-karts. Vinny rode with me in a go-kart, and we were winning the race until somebody hit my go-kart in the back left corner and spun me out, which caused the race to stop until they cleared it up. Some of the other go-karts had passed me before they had to stop for the cleanup, and they ended up winning. Anyhow, the food was pretty good and the games were fun too. The next day we went to Graceland, and that was a lot of fun to the adults in the party but not so fun for the four-year-old. On Monday we headed back home but we stopped at Shiloh National Battlefield Park, where a major Civil War battle was fought.
Then, I stayed home for the rest of the week. I went in to work for a half day on Wednesday, but otherwise I just spent the week at home. I did some cleaning up around the house, and I did some shopping, and Jeff and I went out to lunch together once, but I basically took it easy all week, which was really nice. I really needed to get away from work for a while, and I feel really refreshed after this time away.
Today, Dad and Marvis are coming to celebrate Vinny's birthday. It should be a lot of fun!

Night Race!

2010-10-03T14:09:00.001-04:00

Last night, I participated in my first-ever night race. A friend of mine is involved in a community organization that held a 5K race that began at 9:00 pm. I did the race, and while I didn't win any prizes or anything this time, I felt like it was a huge success for me.

I talked Jeff and Vinny into doing it too. Vinny was lured into it by the promise of a flashlight. Jeff graciously agreed to supervise Vinny and participate in the race instead of just cheering me on at the sidelines.

All my other races have been in the morning, so I would just wake up, eat something like a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast at least an hour before the race, and then go race. I wasn't quite sure what to do for an evening race, because I could have really worn myself out during the day and been too tired to do the race in the evening. I tried to just take it easy for most of the day, and then I ate an omelet for dinner at about 6:00, and then did not eat anything else for the rest of the evening. This worked out well, and I was just at the right stomach fullness to be able to race. Eating any later I would have still been sloshing at 9:00.

We got to the race at about 8:00, because Jeff and Vinny were participating in the 5K walk, which started at 8:30. They started off on their walk and I stretched and talked to some friends while I waited for the run to start. The race started at an old Revolutionary War-era fort, and they used a canon as the starting gun for the race.

I knew that I would be the slowest runner in the race, so I started at the very back of the pack. I ran really slowly and in fact enjoyed a personal police escort right behind me during most of the race. There were some people who faded and I passed, but I was definitely one of the final people across the finish line.

That being said, I was really proud of myself because I ran for 90% of the race. I just started running and kept running at my extremely slow pace. The only times I walked was when I got the water (because I didn't want to choke on it like I did in the last race I was in), and again for about 30 seconds up a hill, but after I got my breath back I started running again.

During this race, I realized that for me, breathing is the trick to running: as long as my breathing was not out of control, I could run. When I had to coordinate breathing and drinking, I couldn't run. And when I was going up that hill, I got out of breath and had to slow down until my breathing could get under control.

I counted my breaths as I ran. This helped me to focus, and I was able to talk myself into running further by saying "Okay, I'm gonna run until I get to 600" and then "Okay, you're at 600, let's make it to 650," etc. As I was nearing the halfway mark, I saw Vinny and Jeff on their walk, and Vinny waved and shouted "Go, Mama!" which was also an inspiration to keep running. Also I would tell myself that I wouldn't want my police escort to be disappointed by me slowing down and walking.

When I saw I was near the finish line, I tried to run a little faster, and as I neared the finish I looked for Jeff and Vinny, hoping they were there to cheer me on. As it turned out, they were not yet there; we all finished our races at about the same time.

Like I said, I did not win any awards or prizes, my mile pace was just over 13 minutes, and in fact my total time was longer than it was in the previous race I was in, but I am just so proud that I ran almost the entire race.

I was also really proud of Vinny for completing the 5K walk (with some help from Daddy). We have a stash of gold metals and when we got home, we gave him one. I think this really encouraged him to do more races. And in fact, I saw that there is another race on the same route in November -- the flyer was in the packet they gave us -- and it says they are giving prizes to walkers. So I think maybe he and I will walk that one and if we are lucky they will give him a prize (and if not, I will take along another gold medal and ask them to present it to him).

Happy New Year!

2010-10-01T08:39:00.000-04:00

What, you didn't hold a party last night and stay up until midnight?!?! Okay, neither did I. But it is a new year -- a new government fiscal year. My project that was due at the end of the fiscal year is done, so I'm feeling free! Hopefully this new year will be as much fun or (better yet) even more fun than last year.

Adventures in Little Things Making a Big Difference

2010-09-21T22:18:00.006-04:00

So, at work I work with some scientists in a field that rhymes with shmooclear shmisics. These people are very smart application scientists, but definitely not computer scientists. I love them because as long as they exist, I will always have a job. They write pretty miserable code, because that's really not their thing. They just want to do the science.

Half of my job with them is improving their code, but more importantly (if I want my efforts to not be wasted), I spend a lot of time developing a working relationship with them. You see, they are a kind of insular community, and don't generally trust some "hot shot" outsider who doesn't know the science. But I have been able to do a few simple things that have drastically improved the performance of their codes, so I think we are getting somewhere.

Most recently, I was profiling one of their codes, and discovered that it spent more than 50% of its time sorting. I looked at their sorting algorithm and saw that it was some homebrew sorting algorithm that was kind of like bubble sort (with computational complexity order N², or the worst possible performance without doing something completely stupid). My guess is, they didn't know that some smart computer scientists had thought a lot about sorting algorithms and developed smart ways to sort; they probably just thought of how they would sort things and implemented that. So I replaced their Frankenstein sort with a heapsort algorithm (worst-case complexity N log N) and the sorting became an insignificant portion of the total runtime. Then, I showed my primary collaborator what I had done, and they discussed it in a meeting the next week. As it turned out, nobody knew why it was sorting; it was some legacy of an abandoned algorithm. I removed the sorting altogether and am in the process of doing a little benchmarking study.

It was pretty amazing, though, that this piece of code that nobody realized was being executed was taking up more than 50% of the test problem runtime, and more than 20% of the benchmark problem runtime!

The next bottleneck in their code is the I/O. They are reading the input in a very unintelligent way (all the processors opening the same file and reading it), so I plan to fix that for them when I get the chance.

Vacation in My Future

2010-09-20T21:36:00.007-04:00

I am pleased to report that there is a vacation in my near future. I have a student coming to work with me beginning next month, but there are times when he will be gone to some conferences, so I will be able to take some time off then.

This is really good because I have kind of a short fuse these days from not being able to be away from work. I still have quite a bit of work to do this month, but after that, I am looking forward to a vacation!!!

Judge Not, and Don't Feel Judged

2010-09-19T09:02:00.001-04:00

I grew up in a very judgmental family environment. We were a liberal/progressive family, so the judgment didn't manifest in disapproval of others' life choices; it manifested in the conclusion that everyone should think just like us.

After my parents' divorce, I was forced to rethink everything -- to reexamine the structures in my mind. It was hard -- but it was also freeing. I railed against this idea nine years ago, but as some of the people in my adult children of divorce mailing list said (the ones who were further past the traumatic events), the divorce was truly one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I left no stone unturned. I felt, for the first time, free to do what I concluded was right, rather than what others told me was right. I grew up.

Many things I reconsidered and came to the same conclusion, e.g., washing your hands after you use the potty is a good idea. Other things I reconsidered and came to a deeper conclusion, e.g., respecting other people's autonomy extends to their freedom to think and draw (possibly erroneous) conclusions, in addition to their life choices.

And still other things I reconsidered and came to a different conclusion. One of those things is about judging others and taking offense. I used to look at everyone and make judgments about their intrinsic worth. I was taught to take the tiniest thing, and analyze it to a conclusion about that person's character. For example, a woman touching her hair while she's talking to you is vain. After that, it was hard for them to change in my eyes, except perhaps for the worse. In return, I always felt judged by other people, and took the conclusions to which I believed they had arrived quite personally.

Then I learned that there are entirely different ways of thinking about other people. You don't have to categorize and judge people; furthermore, people don't fit well into the boxes we put them in. For example, I had a professor who had once done something to offend me who I had to work for shortly after my parents announced their intentions to divorce. I was very angry and apprehensive about working for him, because I thought he was really unkind and judgmental. As it turned out, we ended up getting along very well, and he was highly supportive of me both personally and professionally. He was a little eccentric and socially unskilled, yes, but had the best of intentions.

I also learned that I don't always have to think the worst of others when they do "bad" things. I've talked about this before in terms of people doing mean things to me, but this also extends to people who make life choices I would not make or draw erroneous conclusions due to what I perceive as poor judgment. So, instead of automatically assuming that a poor person who eats a lot of fast food is lazy or gluttonous, I can examine all the factors that have led to those in poverty eating such unbalanced diets,* and actually come to a more positive conclusion.

Today, I tend to suspend judgment of other people. This is not to say that I just let somebody who did something hurtful to me do it again; I just don't take their bad behavior and subtract from their intrinsic worth as a human being. As much as I dislike some people, they are human beings and deserve at a minimum a basic level of respect and dignity.

This also means that I deserve a basic level of respect and dignity, something I didn't realize before. By being less judgmental of others, I am also able to feel less judged myself. And that is a huge weight off my shoulders.

* Fast food is cheaper (per calorie or per ounce) than nutritious food, so a person with little money would choose fast food to maximize the fullness of their belly, under constraint of their small budget. Furthermore, there is a paucity of fresh and nutritious food in poor, urban neighborhoods (which are often referred to as "food deserts"), making it even more difficult to get nutritious foods. Given all the constraints on time and budgetary limits, I would probably make the same choice in the same situation.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2010-09-18T10:24:00.003-04:00

Today is my birthday! I am 35, ~~which is the product of two odd prime numbers (5 and 7). I haven't been the product of two odd primes since a decade ago (25), and won't be again for 14 more years (49) 4 more years (39).~~* which is the product of twin prime numbers (5 and 7). I was last the product of twin primes two decades ago (3 and 5), and I will never again be the product of twin primes unless I live to be 143 (11 and 13).

The next time my age will be the product of two prime numbers that are adjacent in the sequence of primes is when I am 77.

Just as something cool to think about, 5 and 7 are one less than and one more than 6, respectively. Remember in algebra the product of x-1 and x+1? It's x²-1. Plugging in six for x, we have an alternate way of computing 5 times 7. Six squared is 36, and 36-1=35. Cool, huh?

This formula is actually more handy for computing the squares of numbers without resorting to a calculator or long hand calculations, in my experience. For example, what is 21 squared? It's 20 times 22 plus 1: 440+1 = 441. You can change the 1 to any integer a, and get a formula (x-a)(x+a) = x²-a². So what is 43 squared? It's 40 times 46 plus 9: 1840+9 = 1849.

* Math is hard. Also, I need a vacation.

Projection

2010-09-14T21:21:00.000-04:00

Me: Vinny, I have a question for you. Daddy's birthday is on Friday. What do you think we should give him?
Vinny: Hmm. Maybe a remote-controlled car.*
Me: ...

* Apparently Jeff got the same answer when he asked Vinny what they should give me.

Spinner for Dinner

2010-09-02T22:05:00.002-04:00

The money we spent on a fun food game for Vinny is arguably the best money we've ever spent. Vinny is a picky eater and doesn't like to try new foods. We bought this game that consists of a plate that's kind of like a cafeteria tray from elementary school, except that in each part of the tray it has a picture. Then there is a spinner with those pictures, and which ever one you land on when you spin, you have to take a bite of the food in that part of the tray.

Vinny absolutely loved playing "spinner for dinner" as he put it. He even tried a food that we thought he would like but would not have tried without "spinner for dinner." And he liked it!

More Okra Adventures

2010-09-01T22:04:00.001-04:00

We still have a lifetime supply of okra, so I tried to find more recipes for it. I got in the mood for something involving corn and okra, and I found a recipe that inspired me to make a delicious vegetable dish. First I fried up four slices of bacon. Then I took the crispy bacon out of the pan and added some chopped garlic and sliced okra. I fried that up until the okra looked pretty well cooked, then added a package of frozen corn. After that looked like it was thawed out and mostly warm, I added a large tomato, diced. At some point I also added salt and pepper to taste. After everything was piping hot, I crumbled up the bacon on top of it.

This dish was absolutely to die for. The okra was not slimy at all, and the other veggies and the bacon made it just plain delicious.

In Defense of Curse Words

2010-08-23T23:01:00.002-04:00

If I had a native tongue other than English, it could be sailor. In my unfiltered state, I've been known to use a lot of words of the four-letter variety.

Why? Because I like the feeling of stress relief as they roll off my tongue. And because I enjoy being reminded, if only briefly, of the very natural bodily functions they evoke. So it satisfies both my inner Hulk and my inner three-year-old (whose enjoyment of these bodily functions is eclipsed only my real-life three-year-old's).

Speaking of Hulks, my role model Feminist Hulk recently* said

HULK SAY FUCK PATRIARCHY. HULK NOT HAVE PROBLEM WITH "FUCK." ONLY BAD WORDS ARE ONES USED TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL SMALL.

I couldn't agree more.

At the lowest level, words are collections of sounds that we speakers of a language mutually agree have meaning. "Bjurmp" is not a word, for example, at least in English. "Shit" is, however, and it is a word, one to which we have assigned a particularly derogatory meaning.

There are some people who banish words like shit, and asshole, and fuck from their vocabularies. I don't have a problem with that; everyone should be free to use words that they feel comfortable with. At the other extreme, there are people who pepper their speech with these types of words to the exclusion of other, better descriptors, which earns my pity rather than my ire -- it is a sad thing that some folks' verbal expressiveness is limited by their vocabularies.

Ultimately, I do not see the offense in describing excrement, or the sphincter whence excrement exits the body, particularly because there are synonyms to these words that are not considered offensive. It's not the meaning behind the words that is taboo. It's these particular collections of sounds that have been labeled offensive, something I find ridiculous. Feminist Hulk has it right: the only bad words are those that are used to make people feel less than others.

So, while many consider "shit" to be a bad word, I much prefer it to hysterical, mouthy, or ball-busting, terms that are applied exclusively to women** to make them feel small for asserting their wants, needs, and rights as human beings.

* Okay, July 5, which is recent for large values of the word recent.

** or sometimes to children, but only to men as a double insult -- they are as bad as women.

Okra Extravaganza

2010-08-22T19:34:00.016-04:00

We've been enjoying our CSA this summer. We've gotten all kinds of great fruits and veggies. My favorites have been the strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and peaches. I've also enjoyed learning how to cook some new stuff such as bok choy and kale.

The only thing is, we have gotten way too much okra. I am not a big fan of okra myself, but I felt that it was pretty important for us to use it if we could. So I looked on the internet for recipes. Something I came across was a recipe for "Arkansas Fried Okra." I made it for dinner last night and Jeff and I both liked it.

We still have a bunch more okra to eat, so maybe I'll make that again or make something else on this great okra resource (where I found the above recipe too).

Summer Success Stories

2010-08-21T23:29:00.000-04:00

All my students have now left. The last one's final day was yesterday.

I think it was a very productive summer for all three of them. My high school student had some amazing opportunities that most high schoolers don't get. She learned a lot about nuclear physics, visualization, and working at a science lab. She was very appreciative of the opportunity and I hope she'll be able to come back next summer.

My undergraduate student learned Unix, Fortran, and how to use a supercomputer. He was a very bright young man and the work that he did was top notch. I think it was a good experience for him, and he may be here again next summer.

My best success was with my graduate student. She worked for me last summer, and came back again this summer. My goal this summer was to get her a job, and I succeeded! She'll be starting next month in a sibling division at my workplace. I am really excited for her!

The summer was fairly stressful, though, and I realized that three students were too many for me to really be able to handle. Just mentoring them was a full-time job unto itself. Also, two of them were sitting in my office, and that meant I didn't have much of a chance to be alone. And then, I was starting to get stressed out but did not feel like I could take a vacation because I had three students depending on me. And unfortunately, because of my big project, I can't take vacation for another six weeks at the earliest. So my stress levels are pretty high and will remain so for the near future.

I'm having another student come for 10 weeks beginning in October. I worked with him last summer. But he is a senior grad student and just coming to work with me on developing a new algorithm for his code. My role will be to brainstorm with him about developing a more scalable parallel algorithm, which he will then implement. So I think this will be fun rather than stressful. He's going to be in and out, so I'll plan my time off around him.

Breaking the Glass Ceiling and Falling off the Glass Cliff

2010-08-18T07:44:00.000-04:00

I found myself nodding in agreement with every sentence as I read this article on diversity in the workplace. The article at first seems negative (listing bullets on "what not to do" rather than "what to do"), but within the sarcastic wrapping there are plenty of positive suggestions to be found. I showed it to a colleague of mine and together we identified workplace initiatives or situations that fit every single "what not to do" bullet in the article. I saw that it was adapted from a book and I'm thinking I should buy a pallet of the books and give it out like candy to every high-level executive across the entire country.

Secret Message to the Weather

2010-08-14T18:29:00.002-04:00

CHILL OUT!!!

Personal Shout-Out to Judge Walker

2010-08-11T07:52:00.000-04:00

Judge Walker, I just wanted to thank you for advancing this country one step closer to the day when half my first family can experience true equality. I read the entire findings and conclusions document for Perry et al. vs Schwarzenegger et al. and it brought tears to my eyes. Marriage has indeed changed over the course of history, and it is becoming more egalitarian as it should be. You are a fair-minded man for being open to this evolution of society.

If I actually knew you, I would bake you the most beautiful and delicious cake that I could, in thanks for your help in making this country better and stronger through the fair-minded application of justice. Instead, just know that I appreciate you setting us on the path toward equality for all Americans!

Electric Cars of the Past and Future

2010-08-07T17:35:00.000-04:00

First of all, let me say how much I cannot wait to get my new Nissan Leaf. Thanks to my employer, we are among the first markets for its release.

But it's not an original idea. My sister alerted me to the fact that a century ago, there was a company that released a line of electric cars aimed at doctors and women (because electric cars didn't have to be cranked before starting). The cars had a rage of 80 miles between charges -- only 20% less than the advertised range for the Nissan Leaf. I don't know how fast these cars could go, and I suspect that the Leaf is a bit safer.

Speaking of the Leaf, you might worry about the fact that water and electricity do not mix, but the batteries have undergone extensive testing. And in other news, I may be eligible for a free charging station installation in our garage, but I just need to call the company who's determining the eligibility back sometime soon.

There and Back Again

2010-08-03T21:07:00.000-04:00

We were gone for a week, headed up to Wisconsin for a family reunion. Overall, a good time was had -- both of my sisters and their families were there, and Vinny had a great time playing with his cousins -- but there were some hair-raising moments. Family is a double-edged sword -- it can bring out the best and the worst in people. It was quite interesting (in a horrifying sense) to see sibling rivalries still playing out, fifty years later. It was somewhat jaw-dropping to see the blatantly rude glares and dagger-throwing stares of family members whose fundamentalist views were so rigid that they condemned their nearest relatives. But it was also refreshing to see the fierce loyalties between family members whose views may differ, but still share the bond of love and mutual respect.

As you might guess from the previous paragraph, although I took vacation days to attend this event, it was no vacation. But it was at least a different type of tension than the one I experience every day at work, and there's something to be said for variety.

All of this is to say that I am a woman in desperate need of a vacation. I've been (to quote Dr. Isis) losing my junk a lot lately. The stress is enough to drive a person crazy.

I can't take a substantial vacation yet, though. I have a big review the middle of this month, and then it's crunch time for my super-hard project. I won't have a chance to take more than a long weekend until October. In the meantime, I believe I will have to plan that week in October, to have something to look forward to. So, vast blogging audience, any suggestions for a family with a will-be four-year-old, a destination that won't break the bank, won't take too long to travel to, and will be enjoyable for all three parties involved?

Knock-Knock Jokes Redux

2010-07-30T08:06:00.000-04:00

We've had a lot more fun with knock-knock jokes lately. I taught Vinny some pretty hilarious* jokes, including:
A: Knock knock!
B: Who's there?
A: Boo.
B: Boo who?
A: Don't cry, it's just a joke!

A: Knock knock!
B: Who's there?
A: Ach.
B: Ach Who?
A: Bless you!

A: Knock knock!
B: Who's there?
A: Anita.
B: Anita who?
A: Anita tissue! Achoo!

The entertainment value of that last joke has just been priceless. When I first told Vinny that joke, he then responded with the following joke:
Vinny: Knock knock!
Me: Who's there?
Vinny: Roger.
Me: Roger who?
Vinny: Roger, I need a tissue! Achoo!

I didn't understand the connection until I remembered that Anita and Roger are the dalmatian-owning couple in 101 Dalmatians, which then made the joke hilarious**.

This past weekend, I taught him the banana/orange knock-knock joke:
A: Knock knock!
B: Who's there?
A: Banana.
B: Banana who?
A: Knock knock!
B: Who's there?
A: Banana.
B: Banana who?
A: Knock knock!
B: Who's there?
A: Banana.
B: Banana who?
A: Knock knock!
B: Who's there?
A: Orange.
B: Orange who?
A: Orange you glad I didn't say banana again?

We have gotten tremendous mileage out of this joke too. He was able to tell it to Daddy, who laughed heartily (as required). But it has now hybridized with the "Anita" joke to become
V: Knock knock!
M: Who's there?
V: Banana.
M: Banana who?
V: Banana, I need a tissue! Achoo!

* hilarious to a three-year-old, that is...
** even to a thirty-something

Foods I Cannot Bear to Buy

2010-07-24T12:35:00.000-04:00

If you come across any of the following foods in our pantry or refrigerator, it is not because I bought them:

Honey. When I was a kid, we had a beehive in our back yard. Yes, in the city. I can't imagine that this would be legal today, but my dad kept bees in our backyard back in the day. Anyhow, the point is that honey from the beehive in your backyard is way better than anything you can buy on the shelf. And freshly harvested honey in the honeycombs... chewing on that is like eating a piece of heaven. Nothing can compare, which is why I pretty much never eat honey anymore.
Blueberries. We also had blueberry bushes when I was a kid. You could go outside on a warm July morning and pick yourself some blueberries for breakfast. These blueberry bushes had been planted by the previous owner, so they were an older variety that produced berries that were much smaller than the ones you buy in the store. But, my theory of berries is that there is a set amount of flavor per berry, meaning that these small blueberries had more flavor per unit volume than large berries. I can't bear to buy blueberries at the store because they don't taste as good and they are so expensive!
Raspberries. We also had raspberry bushes, which produced berries twice a year. Like the blueberries, they were so delicious to just eat straight off the bush. Those overpriced things you get in those tiny clamshells just cannot compare.
Blackberries. We had blackberry bushes, and I associate blackberries with August. There is nothing better than a blackberry fresh off a blackberry bush. I loved biting into them and tasting the unique combination of sweet and sour that is a blackberry.

Luckily, this year I've gotten to enjoy farm-fresh raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries from my CSA, which is about as good as having the bushes in your backyard (almost as fresh, but a lot less work!) so I have been able to enjoy those fruits. But I don't think I'll be able to find the honey anywhere.

Adventures with Grandpa

2010-07-19T19:16:00.000-04:00

We had a relaxing and enjoyable weekend with my dad. He came down for a visit on Friday night. Vinny and I went to the city pool with him for a couple of hours on Saturday. The pool was really nice -- very big, not too crowded (at least in part because it was overcast all day), and had a large section that was just the right depth for a three-year-old. Vinny had a blast playing with Grandpa and Mama in the pool, and was pretty disappointed at having to leave. But, he was exhausted, and when we got home fell asleep while playing with his cars on the living room floor.

I was really glad that my dad came and that we were able to have such a relaxing weekend together. Vinny was very sad to see him go on Sunday morning, but I reassured him with the promise that we would soon see Grandpa again.

Adventures in the Mountains

2010-07-11T22:54:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, we took a little road trip to see Fontana Lake, which is a human-made lake dammed by the largest concrete dam east of the Rockies. It is TVA's largest dam, and it was built to power the Manhattan Project. We plugged our destination into Gladys the Map (our friendly GPS), and off we went.

What we didn't realize was that Gladys was sending us on US-129, an eleven-mile stretch of which is known as The Dragon, and quite popular with motorcyclists. There are supposedly 318 curves in those eleven miles, which my stomach can attest to. Vinny had asked me to sit in the back seat with him, and I acquiesced. I was feeling pretty sick about halfway into those 11 miles, and requested that Jeff pull over so I could get in the front.

On our way home, I drove, again back on US-129. (I did not get carsick at all while driving.) It was challenging, especially because I was not driving the car I usually drive, but I got the hang of it quickly and did not get in any accidents or anything like that. But I did get home 20 minutes later than Gladys had originally projected, because that road is harder to drive than she thought.

Hello, World!

2010-07-09T22:35:00.020-04:00

Hi! Yes, I do have a blog, even though I don't seem to have enough time these days to write anything on it. Sorry about that. Things have been extra crazy here lately -- supervising three students is a lot of work. It could be a full-time job unto itself if you let it.

In addition, I've suddenly been given another big task (supervising the hiring, care, and feeding of ten postdocs, most of whom have already been hired). It's an interesting task, and allows me to learn a lot of new things about hiring and supervising people, so in that way it is a really good thing. But, it is pretty time-consuming as well. I have inherited this task from someone who didn't quite have enough time for it, and I'm planning to take it and run with it further than was expected.

The postdocs are computational scientists in different application domains, and I don't directly supervise them (but technically, they report to me). They have mentors in their science domain who have provided them with projects and supervise their daily work. But I plan to help connect them with different resources on the computational math and computer science side, to round out their computational science skills. The whole rationale behind hiring ten postdocs in science domains was to train them to become great computational scientists. So, I plan to help them develop their high-performance computing skills. In some cases, this requires a lot more work than in others. One of them never even said the word "computer" when giving the interview talk. So that will be quite a challenge!

In other news, today is my sister Rachel's birthday. Happy birthday, big sis, pioneering the way through the ages! (In other words, I think you're old! Hopefully this ruins your life once and for all.)

Milestones

2010-06-26T23:46:00.000-04:00

Today we took Vinny to his first-ever movie in a movie theater. It was Toy Story 3 (which was very good, in fact). He sat the entire time on my lap, and paid attention to the movie for the majority of the time. The previews were painfully loud, though, so I covered his ears at the beginning. I thought I was going to have bad cramps in my arms (not to mention the pain shooting through my left elbow!), but luckily the movie was not quite so loud, and I was able to remove my hands from his ears.

After the movie we met some friends at a sort of arcade/amusement park place, where our three-year-olds just enjoyed sitting at the driving games and thought they were playing without us having to insert any tokens, and also went on all the kiddie rides (e.g., the airplanes that go round and round, the mini-train, etc.)

Then we went out to dinner together before going home and putting Vinny to bed. I think I will head to bed really soon myself.

Adventures in Conferences

2010-06-22T21:26:00.014-04:00

I'm at a conference for students with a prestigious fellowship, in our nation's capital. Yesterday there was a workshop on high-performance computing, which I attended. I really enjoyed it because there was a high-level discussion of the future of HPC architectures and algorithms.

I talked to an old friend (we've known each other for a long time, not that he's old) about his work as a manager, and he said something that made me feel really good about my career plans (I see myself ten years from now more as a manager than a scientist, although I definitely enjoy what I currently do). He said he may not be publishing any papers now, but that there is definitely a lot of intellectual work to do as a leader in the high-performance computing field, synthesizing ideas together and planning for the future of the field. I am attracted more to the intellectual stimulation of computing in the abstract, and less to the down-and-dirty details of implementation (although I do enjoy coding from time to time, when I get the chance).

I'll talk more about HPC architectures and algorithms when I get a chance to really sit down and write something good.

Adventures in Being a Grown-Up

2010-06-21T21:05:00.000-04:00

Generally I am a fairly optimistic person and I see the best in others. There are few things that make me lose my faith in humanity, but petty, small-minded bigotry is one of those things.*

I am far from perfect, and have my own moments of prejudice, fear, and hatred. After all, I have simmered in the broth of our misogynistic, racist, xenophobic society my entire life, so it is no wonder that some of it seeped into my mind. But I have an innate, very strong sense of fairness that I employ at every opportunity, which helps free my mind of biases.

I told my sister once that what made me a good mathematician was that I was fair with the numbers. When I come up with a candidate algorithm in my work, for example, I try to examine it from as many angles as I can, both the general case and as many exceptional cases as I can muster. In this way, I can further refine the algorithm when I find an exception, or verify when that it will work.

I employ the same technique in my day-to-day dealings with people. Sometimes, people do things to me that I perceive as being (for lack of a better term) really shitty. The easiest and most direct explanation for why they may have done that is to attribute it to pure mean-spiritedness on their part. This is a very simple and elegant explanation -- it requires no creativity or originality, it aligns with my angry feelings about the situation -- but it is also completely false in the vast majority of situations.

No, the vast majority of people are not cruel. They're just regular people like me -- people who make mistakes, who don't have all the information they need to make the optimal decision, who have unexamined biases. They've been hurt in life, and have buttons that other people can inadvertently push without meaning to, just like me.

Dehumanizing your enemy -- making them out to be inhuman monsters -- is deceptively cheap, but costs more in the long term. It also leaves you powerless against this inhuman onslaught of cruelty. There is no connection to which you can appeal for decency. There is no way to stop the evil without escalating it to the next level. This in turn begets more cruelty and suffering, and the cycle continues.

I recently learned of a situation in which I was the target of a great deal of derision and mockery. That, friends, is my button right there, installed by my upbringing. My first reaction was to recoil in horror at the cruel junior-highschoolers in adult bodies who were made entirely of pure evil. But soon I was able to bounce back from the visceral fear I felt because of the situation, and consider the motivations of those people who were so hurt that they had to hurt others to feel better about themselves. I thought of the times that I had mocked others, even though I have never gone to the extreme levels of derision that these individuals did. We all have our moments of terrible insecurity.

Then I thought about how I could approach this situation with these individuals. What do we have in common? Where can I make a connection, and diffuse this tense situation? I think I know the answer to that. And while they may be so hurt that they can't take the hand that I'm extending, I'm okay with that. The important thing is to maintain my humanity along with my dignity when facing these adverse situations.

* This is not to say that there is such a thing as profound, open-minded bigotry.

Happy Fathers Day!

2010-06-20T12:02:00.000-04:00

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there who are reading this blog! We already celebrated last Sunday, because I have to leave on a business trip late this afternoon. We went out to a restaurant of Jeff's choice, and I made him his favorite cake for dessert. It was a good celebration.

Also, a special Fathers Day shout-out to my dad. Thanks for being such a good dad and for loving me unconditionally.