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!

The theme of this past month seems to have been 'internships, and little else.' After we got back from San Francisco, I filed all the requisite forms to get work authorization for the summer. Since then I've done four phone interviews with various researchers in my field, and a week or so ago I spent the (entire) day doing on-site interviews with Microsoft in Redmond. It's been sort of intense, but the news so far is good: I have one official offer and possibly more on the way. It is somewhat of an embarrassment of riches.

After my first phone interview with Microsoft, they (flatteringly) invited me over to Redmond a few days later. This was a little hectic, given that I didn't get my itinerary until a day in advance. One of my flights -- the very first one -- promptly got canceled, but United was kind enough to drive us from Charlottesville to Dulles instead. By the time I made it from Dulles to Seattle to Redmond, I was not in a great state. Fortunately, my 7 straight hours of interviews didn't start until the next morning...

I spent most of my free time in Redmond with Jake Whiton (Colgate '06), who now works for Microsoft as a contractor. We had dinner after my interviews (while I was still desperately getting my brain to recover), and on Saturday he showed me around the area. I liked Seattle, although possibly not as much as San Francisco (lack of a Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps). Either way, after slightly over 48 hours in Seattle, Jake drove me back to the airport (thanks!) and I was on my way back to Charlottesville. Overall, Microsoft did a great job planning the trip -- I had quick connections, the hotel was within walking distance from my interviews, and the traveling was mostly smooth sailing.

In the meantime, I've had plenty of work to do. I found a rather obscure memory management bug in my research code. It basically prevented a lot of memory to be freed until rather late in the program, causing it to use a shitton of RAM (and potentially running out). With the fix it runs about 180 times faster (literally), so I suppose that will settle any reviewer concerns about performance...

MORE WORK TIME NOW WOOT.

I finally got around to 'selecting' and formatting my remaining pictures from the California Trip. The trip was split up roughly as follows:

• Thursday—Drove from Charlottesville to Richmond in the Virginia-equivalent of a blizzard; flew from Richmond to Philadelphia; ate hotdog in 30 seconds while running to the gate post-final-boarding-call; drove from San Francisco to Davis in The Gigantor (rental car) during rush hour.
• Friday—MURI meeting; presented my work on SQL injection vulnerabilities. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the Helix research group (quite literally).

• Saturday—Checked out of Davis. Breakfast with Jim Apple. Drove to Berkeley to see the campus; drove to SFO to return the car; BART train to San Francisco proper. Opening events for SODA 2008
• Sunday—Work-at-hotel day. Birthday-related dinner with Isabelle.
• Monday—Visited the Golden Gate Park; lunch with Nina (Isabelle's adviser); more work.
• Tuesday—Dropped off Isabelle at SODA, then took a walk from North Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge (about 5 miles / 8 km). Decided to take the tiny pedestrian path next to the highway rather than following the coast line, which was *scary.* Got very cold on bridge; took a bus back to SODA.

So there. Almost a week's worth of data in six easy-to-digest bullet points. The grant meeting in Davis was somewhat intense (and long), but useful nonetheless. I liked San Francisco a lot – it was very easy to get around by train, bus, and on foot. I also got a lot of work done in the hotel for no apparent reason.

I have no hopes of catching up on six months worth of festivities, so here's the highly abridged version instead; here's what I did during the last 4.5 months:

• I took classes: math, theoretical crypto, and security.
• There was a paper submission around mid-November. As an exercise to the reader: which two photos to the right were taken within an hour after we submitted the paper?
• After scrambling to catch up on class work, I spent most of December and January-to-date studying for the Ph.D. Qualifying Exam. That was earlier this week. The written exam took a grand total of 15 hours, leading to near-blisters from writing.

For some post-quals winding down, I decided to revamp the layout on Faldara (see the 'old vs. new' on the right). I have a website at UVa now (amazing productivity while procrastinating on something else). I'm hoping to expand the 'publications' section...

At the moment I'm still in post-quals mode, although I do have *mooooore work* to do soon. Next week I'll be visiting UC Davis to present last semester's paper. By the time I get back the semester will have started without me, although in all likelihood I won't be taking more than one class. Ciaooooooooo.

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.

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.

Aside from driving, running, and biking, I've done relatively little. I spent three days with my brother (as noted in a comment here). This involved going to the pub (as per usual), viewing his new office (which is amazing), seeing the Transformers movie (which was awesome) and shopping for running gear. The only thing missing was sleep, but I caught up on that at home. Actually that's the other thing I've been doing -- sleeping

Yesterday I spent an hour or two making apple pie with my sister. It was mainly an attempt for me to make 'my' crust in Europe. That, unfortunately, turned out to be harder than it sounds. Even though my euro-ingredients were mostly similar to the ones I get in Charlottesville, the crust was very... untasty. I'm not entirely sure what caused this

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:

Isabelle, Kristen, and I traveled to San Diego on June 10th. We drove to DC, stopping at IKEA on our way to the airport. The Swedish meatballs were delicious, and I picked up a lamp for my new room. After IKEA we flew directly to San Diego for the 2007 Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC). I attended PLDI (Programming Language Design and Implementation), which had a bunch of interesting presentations. UVA had a solid 15 or so people in attendance at the various conferences, so we had plenty of entertainment outside of the presentations and its (occasionally somewhat nerdy) attendees. Dr. Soffa invited everyone out to dinner on Tuesday, which was tasty and highly entertaining. I sat next to Adam Meyerson.

My paper was due on the 12th, so my last couple of days in Virginia had consisted mostly of running experiments, making minor adjustments, and rerunning them. A single run would take a good 10 hours, so the process was somewhat hectic. By the time we were on the plane to San Diego, though, I had most of the paper finished and ready to go. I had submitted a draft version on Saturday, before we left. I did the final version on Monday from the hotel and submitted at 11pm, a solid 5 hours before the deadline.

I was quite pleased. 8-) After that, being in the foreign lands (i.e. California) was much less stressful. We did a bunch of stuff during the afternoons, after the conferences had ended for the day. We made trips to the harbor region and had dinner in the gas light district during the week. PLDI ended on Wednesday, leaving me two days for Extreme Relaxation. On Friday, we visited the moderately amazing San Diego Zoo, where we saw pandas, koalas, and a million other types of critter. We flew back to DC on Saturday, June 16.

Back in Charlottesville, it was about time for me to get my new room in order. I took two afternoons to paint the walls and ceiling, with help from Krasi and Isabelle. I picked 'pale orange' for the walls, which could be described more accurately as 'bright yellow.' The ceiling got an extra coat of white, which it needed desperately, and the loft and random details got some baby blue-related color. The walls needed a lot of hole-filling, so I got to practice my spackling skills as well. After a couple of days of airing the place out, I finally put in my newly donated bed and... well... no other furniture.

July saw two non-work related events: sushi night with Wes and the rest of the Weimer Research Group (WRG) on July 2nd, and a shared birthday party for Blake and I on Friday the 13th. The home-made sushi was delicious, and as it turns out I'm not so good at playing Taboo after so much as half a drink. The birthday parties were hilarious, and I had a lot of tasty mojito-style drinks before running off to play Capture The Flag for a few hours. I was completely exhausted when I got back from that, so after another glass or two (of water) I went straight to bed.

On that note, it's about time I got a haircut... Cheers 8-)

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.

Isabelle and I made a break for Colgate last Sunday. We took about 7.5 hours to get there, leaving around 11am and arriving just after 6:30pm.

Monday was a fairly hectic day. It involved a visit to Clarice at 10am, which was the only 'scheduled' event. The rest of the day consisted of a lot of driving around, lunch at the Denny's in Oneida, stopping for a chat with a bunch of people, and so on. We had a rather delicious dinner with Mrs. Tucker, Professor Mulry, and his wife. It was good to be back for a bit, if somewhat disorganized 8-) Thanks to everyone who helped.

Tuesday consisted of The Long Trip to VA. This time it took us 8.5 hours, on account of road work in PA and some queues in Virginia. I managed to nearly destroy the rental car on the way back to the airport (not entirely my own fault, surprisingly), but alas (the other guy dodged).

The other day Isabelle and I made rhubarb strawberry pie. Aside from the stock crust it was moderately amazing.

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.

On the work front there has been a bunch of undergrad PL related festivities -- grading, coming up with crackpot assignments, etc. Tomorrow I'm doing a 75 minute lecture, which has taken me all of 12 hours to prepare for *sigh.* My own class work has been unexciting.

Other events include last week's CS Trivia Bowl. Together with Holroyd I was part of team μγ. The name was supposed refer to my undergrad teammates, but they got stuck in traffic Holroyd and I took a significant lead over the other teams (*cough* amateurs *cough*) before succumbing to such questions as "How many stars in the night sky are visible to the naked eye?" Double you tee eff...

Also noteworthy is the fact that I still haven't lethally injured myself while fencing. My most recent feats include getting de-helmet-ed by Wes, and getting stabbed in the back by Ray.