Tuesday, August 31, 2010
A day of transitions
Change is in the air, which feels charged like the impending thunderstorms of August. How it unfolds is anybody's guess, but the best that can be done is to be prepared for whatever happens.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Down the Rabbit Hole
This is the end run for my dissertation. It's down to a few more pages of code, a bit of write-up, and that's it. So far as I know. But despite my near-abandonment of this blog, it was intended to chronicle my return to school and the progress of my doctoral program, so here goes, albeit neither inspired writing nor inspiring.
I've fallen behind in pretty much most of the rest of my life- with no summer classes to teach, I've got a summer gig that still allows a flexible schedule. I got to edit a book chapter, and for a couple weeks' work, get to be an author, even if I'm #5 in the list. As we all know, after the fourth name, the remainder were in charge of some portion of coffee, donuts, bagels, and/or cream cheese. FTW I make awesome coffee, and a pub credit is still a CV entry.
It's been a rough ride, a marathon of sorts, and approaching my sixth year back in Albany. It's not over yet, but the end is in sight, finally. I have weeds in the backyard that are taller than my kids. When I first moved here, that wouldn't have meant so much as it does today, nearly 6 years later...
But this is brutal stuff. Being difficult in itself would be one thing, but it takes a heavy toll on your life. One of my best friends here got married midway through the PhD program, and now is nearly finishing his divorce. I've aged a bit, having gone through a round of medical issues- the highlight was probably losing much of my central vision before a chest artery suddenly unclogged a few months ago. That and another medical issue had impacted me for probably years before another fairly sudden, dramatic recovery shortly after day surgery. That, after years of describing symptoms to doctors who looked at my "lifestyle" of kids + work + school and merely attributed it to lousy diet and lack of sleep without bothering to actually check anything. To say I feel years younger now would be an understatement.
Clearly an experience that still leaves me a bit freaked out, given my sudden improvement (not to mention drastic and immediate improvement in my vision.) I've got a better grasp now of what it'll be like to actually get old, but will do my best to appreciate my much better health of today. Also, the next time I feel my brain overheating and can see my heartbeat for extended periods, I'll be a little more eager to go to the doctor...
It's the programming that's holding me back. I've somehow fallen into finishing my project in VBA, since I started it to quickly prototype, and never bothered to convert to anything else since it seemed to run fast enough. The downside is the little quirks of a language I haven't done much with in almost a decade. When this is all done, I'll be Dr. Visual Basic for Applications. Oh the doors that'll open.
What happened to transportation, the reason I came back here? It became part of a larger problem- how we move through space and time and how that impacts our ability to live our lives. Kind of general, but it's a superset of the original problem. And I've gone a bit more into graph theory, which the transportation people like to pay homage to, even if they don't seem to understand much. (Dijkstra's algorithm is all cool and that, but it's 50 years old now.)
The graph stuff is pretty awesome. I've been keeping an eye on an experiment in journalism, an industry that's been imploding over the past couple of years as part of this so-called Great Recession. True/Slant had a lot of innovative ideas, though it shuttered over last weekend. However, they didn't go very far into a number of areas I'd expect to be critical- the microcontent/content issue, smart links/tags, and mobile / ebook presentation. Oh wells, next media experiment. They had their hands full with content, contributors, and keeping the whole thing running as a startup. On the bright side, it's that much longer before anybody tries to lock down the IP on that, much as the industry is trying with newsfeeds and location.
Should wrap it up here. This isn't the last post I make, but the next one won't be for a while. This is the final push to completion and there may not be much else to say in the meantime.
I've fallen behind in pretty much most of the rest of my life- with no summer classes to teach, I've got a summer gig that still allows a flexible schedule. I got to edit a book chapter, and for a couple weeks' work, get to be an author, even if I'm #5 in the list. As we all know, after the fourth name, the remainder were in charge of some portion of coffee, donuts, bagels, and/or cream cheese. FTW I make awesome coffee, and a pub credit is still a CV entry.
It's been a rough ride, a marathon of sorts, and approaching my sixth year back in Albany. It's not over yet, but the end is in sight, finally. I have weeds in the backyard that are taller than my kids. When I first moved here, that wouldn't have meant so much as it does today, nearly 6 years later...
But this is brutal stuff. Being difficult in itself would be one thing, but it takes a heavy toll on your life. One of my best friends here got married midway through the PhD program, and now is nearly finishing his divorce. I've aged a bit, having gone through a round of medical issues- the highlight was probably losing much of my central vision before a chest artery suddenly unclogged a few months ago. That and another medical issue had impacted me for probably years before another fairly sudden, dramatic recovery shortly after day surgery. That, after years of describing symptoms to doctors who looked at my "lifestyle" of kids + work + school and merely attributed it to lousy diet and lack of sleep without bothering to actually check anything. To say I feel years younger now would be an understatement.
Clearly an experience that still leaves me a bit freaked out, given my sudden improvement (not to mention drastic and immediate improvement in my vision.) I've got a better grasp now of what it'll be like to actually get old, but will do my best to appreciate my much better health of today. Also, the next time I feel my brain overheating and can see my heartbeat for extended periods, I'll be a little more eager to go to the doctor...
It's the programming that's holding me back. I've somehow fallen into finishing my project in VBA, since I started it to quickly prototype, and never bothered to convert to anything else since it seemed to run fast enough. The downside is the little quirks of a language I haven't done much with in almost a decade. When this is all done, I'll be Dr. Visual Basic for Applications. Oh the doors that'll open.
What happened to transportation, the reason I came back here? It became part of a larger problem- how we move through space and time and how that impacts our ability to live our lives. Kind of general, but it's a superset of the original problem. And I've gone a bit more into graph theory, which the transportation people like to pay homage to, even if they don't seem to understand much. (Dijkstra's algorithm is all cool and that, but it's 50 years old now.)
The graph stuff is pretty awesome. I've been keeping an eye on an experiment in journalism, an industry that's been imploding over the past couple of years as part of this so-called Great Recession. True/Slant had a lot of innovative ideas, though it shuttered over last weekend. However, they didn't go very far into a number of areas I'd expect to be critical- the microcontent/content issue, smart links/tags, and mobile / ebook presentation. Oh wells, next media experiment. They had their hands full with content, contributors, and keeping the whole thing running as a startup. On the bright side, it's that much longer before anybody tries to lock down the IP on that, much as the industry is trying with newsfeeds and location.
Should wrap it up here. This isn't the last post I make, but the next one won't be for a while. This is the final push to completion and there may not be much else to say in the meantime.
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