Adventures with Grandpa

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

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!

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

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

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

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!

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.

I Survived!

Just a little note to let my vast blogging audience know that I survived the grueling week I described in my previous post.

The crash course was a huge success.  We are planning to offer it again sometime in the fall or winter.  The only problem was that during the morning session I stood still for three hours and by the time noon rolled around I was so stiff that it hurt to walk and then sit down to have some lunch.  So in the afternoon I moved around more and that seemed to solve the problem.

The playdate today went pretty well.  We will definitely have to do another one.  We did not end up going to the concert tonight, which was just as well because Vinny was exhausted by the day of fun.

I am doing laundry as I type this, preparing for my trip.

Plans for the Next Week

This next week is going to be incredibly busy.

Monday

• The week begins with taking Vinny to summer school, same place as preschool, but at an earlier time.  Hopefully I will time it all right.
• Once at work, I warm up with a meeting that I have every Monday morning and absolutely abhor. 
• My second summer student arrives.  Pick him up from his orientation, and then set him up with his computer accounts, go through orientation and training info, etc.  The timing may be such that I can get out of that meeting a little early!
• New employee arrives, and since I am still emergency backup group leader, I get to go to his new employee luncheon and then set him up with accounts, go through orientation information, etc.  Maybe I can do some of this at the same time as I do the student's stuff.
• Turn in everything I want to have printed out for Thursday and Friday's supercomputing course.  Endure the wrath of my admin when she discovers she's going to have to print out something like 8000 pages of material.  Thank goodness for amazing modern copier technology!
• Finish reviewing a proposal that I don't actually know much about, but agreed to do because it was one of those things you can't say no to.
• Try to spend some time with my grad summer student, working with her on compiling and instrumenting some code that she theoretically can finally access.
• Ping somebody to give me some code that I want my undergraduate summer student to use for the summer.
• Argue with people about granting priority to a project that really needs high priority.
• Make sure that a poster I requested will be available in time for me to take it when I go on business travel next week.

Tuesday

• Continue to fight for undergrad's new accounts, and new employee's new accounts.
• Hold group meeting and tell everyone to get a dang ergonomic evaluation already unless they want to have a nasty scar on their elbow (or worse)
• Write up something to tide my high school student over when she arrives on Monday and I am gone until Thursday late afternoon.
• Do a phone interview with a potential postdoc (or this could take place on Wednesday).

Wednesday

• Celebrate my boss' first day back at work after his two and a half week vacation!
• Brief him on everything he missed
• Work with my students (hopefully the undergrad has his accounts at this point)
• Perhaps I will have some time to do some actual work
• Make sure that all my travel plans for next week are in order

Thursday

• Beginning course for the supercomputing course
• Assist my colleague who teaches this day
• Sneak out and go to a mandatory meeting with a visitor
• Come home and entertain my sister, should-be sister-in-law, and nephew

Friday

• Say goodbye to my sister et al.
• Advanced course for the supercomputing course
• I have to teach this all day
• Miss out on a full-day mandatory meeting which was only scheduled last week (supercomputing course has been on the books for a couple of months now)

Saturday

• Take Vinny and Jeff to playdate with a man and his 3-year-old whom I met at the children's museum a few weeks ago and who is new to town.  Hopefully I will have invited a bunch of other parents with similarly-aged children, as he requested, as well.
• Possibly go to an outdoor concert featuring Chubby Checker, but it may just be too danged hot, sticky, and crowded to do that.
• Do laundry and pack for my trip.

Adventures in Popularity

I have organized a two-day course in supercomputing, which I am teaching along with another colleague.  I have done this course in one form or another for five years now.  It is primarily aimed at summer interns, so that they can learn the basics of parallel programming and using a supercomputer.

Last year I think we had maybe 30 people signed up for each day.  This year, we had to close registration yesterday after exceeding 80 registrants for each day of the course.  The capacity of the room is about 70, and I'm counting on some people just not showing up.

I think we will have to offer the course again sometime during the fall or winter, because it was unusually popular this year with staff members and postdocs.

Irrefutable Logic

Vinny: Daddy, I want to go swimming.
Jeff: We can't go swimming right now, buddy, it's raining!
Vinny: It's not raining in a hotel!
Jeff: ...

Postdoc Preparations

My boss has been on vacation for a while and left me in charge in his absence.  So far not much excitement has been going on, just a few silly fire drills to take care of.  On Friday, though, I had to actually do something of substance.

A postdoc is coming for his pre-employment physical, so the paperwork had to be filled out before he arrives.  I had to fill out a form, checking the boxes for occupational activities that applied or did not apply to his job, such as sitting, standing, crouching, kneeling, running, etc.  I also had to check off which occupational hazards he would come into contact with, e.g., hot or cold environment, chemicals, biohazards, etc.  There were an awful lot of boxes and I hope I filled them all out correctly.

When I was a postdoc, my postdoc adviser inadvertently checked a box saying that I might sometimes need to use a respirator.  As a result, I had to have extensive testing of my lungs, my ability to carry loads, and my ability to crouch.  I also had to have a physical every year to make sure I was still capable of using a respirator.  One physical was when I was bursting-at-the-seams pregnant, and not physically capable of using a respirator, and as a result my respirator use was restricted.  It was pretty humorous because the restriction did not change the frequency of my respirator usage.  But they had to write up a report that detailed all my respirator usage restrictions and I had an extra tag I had to put on my lanyard that explained the restrictions, etc.

Here's hoping that I did not cause a similar situation for this incoming postdoc!

Adventures with Summer Students

Today my first of three summer students arrived.  This is a student I had last year, so she already knows the ropes.  After her orientation, she just came and got me rather than me having to go pick her up.  She is even sitting in the same room as she was in last year.  But she was a little startled by all the changes that have occurred in the past year, like the construction of a new transformer room down the hall from my office that took away a former lobby and alcove.

But the project is completely different.  She hasn't really started on anything yet because her accounts have not yet been set up.  Last year she did more database work; this year she'll be doing some instrumentation and performance modeling of applications running at full scale on the supercomputer.  I think it will be a good experience for her.

My next student, the undergraduate who will be working on this same project, arrives in two weeks.  Then my high school student will arrive the next week, while I am away at a conference.  I've arranged with my colleague down the hall to look after her for those first four days.

Also, we are offering our summer one-day supercomputing course.  Last year we had about 30 people register for it.  This year we already have 55, and that's before our target audience, the summer students, have even had a chance to register.  The room doesn't hold too many more people (maybe 75 or 80) so we will be in trouble if a lot more folks register.  I'm thinking if it's this popular, we will have to have one course during the year for staff members and another course in the summer just for students.

Today in Treading Water

Sometimes, trying to stay afloat in the sea of things to do is hard.  There are so many requests, so many reports, so many deadlines, so many different things to do, that it becomes overwhelming.

At a certain point, there are so many different tasks that have to be done, that the overhead of switching contexts hogs the majority of your time.  It is at this point that my brain completely freezes up and I lose the ability to decide what to do.  I just give up, ceasing to get anything done whatsoever.

I give myself a little break before looking at my long "to do" list and reprioritizing.  Then I take a deep breath and dive back in, hoping that I can keep my head above water for a little longer this time.

Humor

Vinny has recently learned the art of the knock-knock joke (sort of).  Just now as I was putting him to bed, I was treated to the following:

Vinny: Knock Knock!
Me: Who's there?
Vinny: Orange!
Me: Orange who?
Vinny: Orange fan! [hysterical laughter]

Vinny: Knock Knock!
Me: Who's there?
Vinny: Red!
Me: Red who?
Vinny: Red light!
[we both laugh]

Me: Okay, okay, my turn.  Knock Knock!
Vinny: Who's there?
Me: Nighty!
Vinny: Nighty who?
Me: Nighty Night!
[much laughter from both of us.  I kiss him, get up, and leave the room.]

For Days When I Feel Like SMASHing...

... there is Feminist Hulk, who is smashing the gender binary, defying Cartesian mind-body duality, baking for the monthly feminist potluck, and smashing male privilege into hegemonic shrapnel.

I am in awe of such verdent power rising up against oppressive societal norms.

Eating My Vegetables

So last week was the first week of our CSA.  For last week, we got some strawberries, lettuce, arugula, and bok choy.

We had never cooked with bok choy before, but I searched for recipes on the internet, got inspired by them, and ended up making a stir fry with chicken, mushrooms, baby corn, and the bok choy, and boy was it delicious!  I started with cooking some ginger and some garlic in the hot oil before adding the chicken.  Then I took the chicken out and cooked the mushrooms.  I added the bok choy and the baby corn at about the same time, and also added some soy sauce.  It turned out amazingly well despite my complete lack of measurements.

This week we got more strawberries, more bok choy (yum!), some more lettuce, and some beets.  I am pretty excited about the beets.  I love beets!  Jeff does not share my opinion of them.  But hopefully I can cook them in a way that he will like them if he just gives them a try.  We were both kind of skeptical about bok choy but we really ended up liking it, so I think he will probably end up liking beets too.

Vehicular Velocity

A few weeks ago, I had our GPS in the Beetle for a couple of days.  The GPS has a spedometer feature on it, and I observed that the speed the GPS reported was lower than the speed on the car's spedometer.  In fact, it was about 5% off.

I didn't know which one to trust, but then I observed that the radar speed reader that the police put out also put me at about 5% slower than what my spedometer read.  So I'm thinking my spedometer reads 5% faster than the actual speed.

This explains the times when I've been driving along at the speed limit and other cars have come along and driven right behind me, like I'm driving too slow.  I guess I really was going about 5% too slow even when I thought I was going the speed limit.

Summer Student Spectacular

I am going to have a veritable entourage of students working for me this summer.  The graduate student who worked for me last summer is coming back again.  I acquired an undergraduate by being the only person who had an idea for a project for him.  And if I can get all the paperwork done, I'm also going to have a 16-year-old high school student.

The grad and the undergrad are going to work on performance modeling for my big project.  The high schooler is going to work on some visualizations of nuclei.  I'm going to supervise all three of them while doing my regular job.

The way I got the high school student is kind of a long story.  I wanted to bring the graduate student in through a different program than the one she came in under last year.  The only program I could find that would pay her what I felt she deserved to be paid was in a somewhat unrelated engineering field.  All the other programs would have paid her something like $400 less per month than what she made last summer.  Luckily, one of the codes that we are analyzing for my big project is in that engineering field, so I asked the PI of that code if he would be willing to be her official mentor on paper and let me supervise her in practice.  He said of course he would be willing to help like that, so this is how we got her in and at a fair pay rate.

But while we were talking, he told me about a girl who he had coached in soccer, and how she was really interested in science and asked me if I'd be willing to be her mentor.  I said sure, with the caveat that I had to find some funding.  I didn't really think too much about it though, until last week when the girl emailed me to express her interest.  Then I had to find something for her to do.  So I talked with another of my collaborators and found a project and some funding.

Now I just have to go through a whole lot of extra paperwork because she is a minor.  I have to have a special inspection of the workplace, develop an individual, restricted work plan just for her, and also verify that this is not a case of nepotism (fortunately, it is not).  But, if I can successfully jump through all these hoops in a timely manner, I think this will be a really good experience for her, and we'll have some fantastic nuclear visualizations!

Vinny and the Violin

I was only a little older than Vinny when I started playing the violin.  I had always loved music, and it was a logical next step to sign me up.  I mean, I loved music so much that it was one of the only thing that would soothe me when I got upset.  So it made perfect sense to start creating it on my own.

Vinny recently saw a picture of me at the age of 4, playing the violin.

Ever since then, he has been enthusiastic about learning to play the violin himself.  When we talk about musical instruments, he regularly mentions that he wants to play the violin.

I haven't actively discouraged him from it, but I admit that I am less than enthusiastic about him learning to play the violin at this age.  I think he still needs to be a child, and I don't want to subject him to the kind of discipline that is necessary to learn an instrument yet.

And when he is old enough for it, I am not enthusiastic about the violin as a first instrument.  I think he would be much better served to learn the piano first.  Piano is a useful skill.  There are a lot more opportunities for gigs.  Also, musically speaking, you learn to think about more than just a single melodic line, which is very useful when you play in ensembles or even when you're just trying to appreciate music.  I think a lot of music theory would have come easier to me if I'd had training on the piano.

I also worry about the impact that playing the violin has on a young body.  I know that twisting my left arm into the fingering position on the violin starting at such a young age and for so long contributed to my arm and elbow problems.  I would hate for my son to be disabled as a young adult like happened to me.  He's not left handed, though, so maybe he wouldn't have the same thing happen.

In any case, I won't be signing him up for any lessons any time soon.  He needs to just keep enjoying music for a year or two more.