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.

The other good news is that I can finally eat normally. I managed to get sick during my last day in The Netherlands, and it was fairly intense for a day or two. It got better during my first week in Virginia, but it wasn't really until a day or two ago that I felt like I was eating appropriately sized meals. Being unable to really eat well put a bit of a damper on my 'back in Charlottesville' festivities, since celebrating typically involves food for me

My trip back to Charlottesville was not that bad. I had a direct flight from Amsterdam to Dulles, so there wasn't any trouble along the way (like Heathrow, say, which is where I got stuck for a bit last year). At Dulles, the immigration line was pretty much the longest I'd ever seen, so it took me over 90 minutes to finally get out of the customs and immigration area. The line took quite a bit out of me -- I was still a little sick and it was warm and crowded.

By the time I made it out, I was faced with blurry vision and about 600 people waiting outside the customs area. Fortunately, Isabelle found me quickly, and we finally left the airport around two hours after I had landed. The drive was a lot more pleasant than the flight. Arriving back in Charlottesville reminded me a little of getting back to Colgate for my sophomore year: ready to get back to work.

My first Saturday here marked an important milestone -- I got furniture. Isabelle and I made the trip to IKEA and ended up buying some more lights, a desk, some drawers, and some shelves. Up until then, my new room had consisted primarily of a bed and a single IKEA lamp. I now have enough shelve space to actually store stuff off of the floor. More importantly, even, I can do work at my desk. Unlike my office, said desk actually has a sizable window right next to it, making it surprisingly less headache inducing.

The latest addition to my room is a 24x36" version of Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhone, which looks moderately amazing on my 'pale orange' walls. All in all, I'm quite fond of the new room. It took a lot of work to get it this way, but it has a bit more personality than my previous dwellings.

This past week saw the arrival of the department's new grad students. This, too, was good news, mainly in the form of free food. (The new grad students were interesting too.) Last Friday my house mates and I organized this year's rendition of Nerd Bash, the CS grad students' traditional starting-the-year party. Among other things, it featured rather tasty Singapore Slings; perhaps a little too tasty. Either way, the party worked out well and the cleaning was relatively painless.

I'm mostly back to my routine food-wise. Today's dinner consisted of baked (i.e. microwaved) potato with butter, bacon, curry ketchup, and Dutch mayo. The picture provides indisputable evidence that I'm on a fine-tuned diet that cleverly combines the two major food groups: meat and potatoes. I'm starting to consider combining this Diet of Champions with some exercise; I'll let you know how that works out.