I've been back for all of two weeks, and it already looks like Semester 3 in Virginia is going to be rather busy. I think I've said that at the start of every semester in the past 3 years, so let me qualify this a little further: reaaaaaaly busy.

So the good news is I managed to get a paper published in Automated Software Engineering. The acceptance rate was under 15% this year, so that's Very Good News. The paper is titled 'Modeling Bug Report Quality' and I'll be presenting it in Atlanta, Georgia, in November.

I spent about two months at home last year around this time. This year -- not so lucky. I've been home for about a week and a half, and I'm already halfway on my way back to Virginia! Literally so, actually; I fly back August 14th. Also I'm already aching to get back to work. Wes' adviser telepathy caught on to this yesterday; he sent me some reading to do. So yeah... not quite the same as last summer in terms of time management.

I arrived here on my 23rd birthday after a long and uneventful flight from Dulles; thanks for Isabelle to getting me there. Since then I've been seriously easygoing (but without the Malibu). I've been running every day, and it's been getting significantly easier as a result. I've taken to doing a bike ride after some of my runs, so hopefully I'll still be able to bike after I get back

My mom has a go-kart car these days, so I've spent quite a bit of time getting the hang of driving a manual. (Note that I was able to obtain a picture of my mom *near* the car; this is rare. Also note The Nephew and The Brother-in-law.) This is the first manual I've driven by myself (i.e. without anyone else in the car). I've also clocked quite a bit of time with my dad sitting next to me, which I imagine must have looked somewhat comical. Changing gears still requires a little bit of thought, but I'm mostly 'safe' on the road now :-p Unless anything unexpected happens, of course, in which case my first instinct is to stall the car.

I've been home for well over 48 hours, so it's about time I write something about what I've been up to since the end of May. I've been fairly busy too.

On May 30, Holroyd, Isabelle, Kinga, Ray, Wes, and I went hiking up Old Rag Mountain, about an hour North of Charlottesville. It was fairly intense, but the view was amazing (see pictures). We took about six hours to get up the mountain and back down, at which point we made up for lost calories at IHOP. Thanks to Wes for dinner and a clear demonstration of his organizational prowess.

The following week marked an even more epic event; I submitted the abstract for my paper on bug reports. More importantly, Isabelle and I made bitterballen around the same time; I believe there may be some kind of reward structure going on here. Either way, they were delicious :-p My only complaint is that I ate too many.

June also saw the start of our lease for the new house (that's Blake, Karolina, Krasi, Sosa, and I). Among our initial 'concerns' was the fact that the previous tenants' stuff was still all over the place when we got our keys. We produced a sizable list of complaints about the house shortly after that. The walls and ceiling in my bedroom desperately needed to be fixed up and painted, and I had a rather ancient AC unit blocking one of my windows. I initially just moved my stuff so I could rent out my old apartment, and finally moved in after San Diego:

Congrats to everyone who's graduating Colgate or UVa '07 today 8-)

Last week was officially *the* last week of classes. For me, it involved frantically coding up an Algorithms project, taking the Algorithms final, and finishing up the last couple of Operating Systems papers. I finally wrapped up on Friday, which means that I have had *nothing* to do except for my research for the past week. Woot.

Ack -- it's been a month. Unfortunately I don't remember what I did exactly. I'm guessing I did a lot of work. Yes... work. That sounds plausible.

There has been no baking of note this month. There was a chocolate-cake-from-a-box, and a custard tart (aka giant fried egg) which got tossed. I've recently watched about a season and a half worth of Babylon 5, which may account for the lack of baking opportunities. I've also have an extremely slow Go game going on with Michael Holroyd.