It's that time of the year again (time for my semi-annual post to Faldara). After quals (in January) and an initial month of internship applications, the semester was mostly about The Master's Thesis of Ultimate Awesome (TMTUA). I also managed to squeeze in a visit home (in March, shortly after my previous post), a couple of paper submissions, and the occasional class attendance. The end result is a Master's (apparently Wes has my diploma, or so he 'asserts') and a summer job at Intel, which is where I am currently.

As is my custom when catching up on several month's worth of Exciting Graduate Student Life, I will now skim. For the full effect, imagine me talking about my MS thesis throughout all of the following social events.

Around Easter-ish, there was an Easter Brunch at Wes' house. I made meringue biscuits, which was moderately entertaining. Piping consistently proved to be somewhat of a challenge.

Around the third week of April, the WRG drama club hiked up Old Rag Mountain just like we did before, but this time at night. We were out until 6am, and after an initial 30 minutes of allergy medicine induced bliss, I spent most of the time sneezing and coughing. By the time we made it back to Charlottesville, my right eye had swollen to the point of being mostly shut. I envision I looked somewhat similar having been eaten alive by mosquitoes in Spain (back in the 80s :-p), except back then I could breathe.

Anyway, here's what 'conversation' is like when the WRG is death-marched up a mountain in the middle of the night. The camera was on a tripod; I was off dying somewhere while this recorded.

A few days later it was time for another death march: my thesis defense. The thesis and slides are up on my UVa website; the 'before and after' pictures here are courtesy of Ray. The presentation featured the Holy Grail and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch; both suitable indicators of my thesis' awesomeness. I brought speculaas and made strawberry-rhubarb pie to keep the audience busy eating rather than asking difficult questions.

Just a couple of weeks ago, UVa was pleasantly surprised by a visit from Tom Ball. He gave a decent high-level talk on some of the work they're doing in Redmond at the moment -- including some of the projects I was introduced to back in February. We returned the favor by interrogating him pretty much up to the minute he left town.

Last week I spent a little bit of time studying for Quals, and a lot of time moving. My stuff at The House is now in Wes' House for me to pick up at the end of summer. My office moved from Olsson to Small, the building across the street as it were. I've taken Isabelle's old desk, which has several features my old office didn't (most notably: daylight). On Saturday morning I finally got around to actually leaving, with some assistance from Isabelle, who drove me to Richmond. My flights to Chicago and then San Jose were mostly uneventful. The (2 hour) flight to Chicago was business class, which was significantly more tolerable than my usual. Unfortunately I had a cramped middle seat to San Jose, which was the longer flight. I suppose I came out reasonably well on average.

Getting a rental car in San Jose was awful. I spent 40 minutes waiting in line to get to the Dollar counter. After a few minutes of 'doing business,' the agent gave me a rather constipated look and told me: "Sir, I can't rent you a car because you smell like alcohol." The conversation that followed did not go well. A major highlight: I handed my deodorant stick to the woman and she sniffed it (in public) to decide if this was what she smelled.

The real gem arrived when I took this up with the supervisor. She had obviously had some type of vagueness training, because rather than publicly accusing me of being drunk, she told me I was "not in the right frame of mind to drive." So the story changed somewhat. This was the gem: the supervisor was under the (mistaken) impression that I had a paid-for reservation, and she offered to have the Thrifty supervisor honor that rate instead of renting me a car herself, since Thrifty is owned by Dollar, or some such. So apparently it's perfectly acceptable behavior for a rental company to "determine" (in this case erroneously) that someone is inebriated, and then have another company provide the vehicle. Excellent corporate citizenship. I got a car from National instead. It's a giant Pontiac Grand Prix. It certainly is... big.

My stay in Santa Clara had been intense, to say the least. I spent Saturday night at a hotel, then picked up the key to my apartment at 10:30 on Sunday. Sunday was a whirlwind of 2 trips to IKEA (a 20 minute drive) and one trip to the grocery store, interleaved with lots of furniture building. The end result was partially built furniture. I was missing a 'slatted bed base,' which I picked up on Monday during IKEA trip #3. The end end result is in the pictures. It's almost like a real person lives here -- aside from a lack of living room furniture (and one bathroom unused, and one bedroom devoted entirely to IKEA boxes). I'm looking forward to the arrival of... everyone, including my apartment mate next week.

My time at Intel is spent, among other things, writing this. Monday consisted largely of HR presentations on Intel's "Values," the company's history, etc. The afternoon was spent getting my office set up together with my manager, Peng Tu. D'end!