Working like a mad women on a paper and prelim so a quiz is all you get

Intel commissioned Christopher Guest to put together 2 ads for hardware based security for business. They are great!!!

( And behind the cut )

This morning, while getting ready to go into work, I received the following e-mail from the prof I TAed for last semester and did a guest lecture for this semester.

While the students were laboring on the SELinux lab, they were discussing the Senior Project Class and the relatively unexciting guest lectures. At that point I piped up that I had guest lectured in that class in the past and gave a very exciting lecture :-).

At that point, the students back peddled and said that most of the guest lectures in cyber security were at least sort of interesting. A couple of the students piped up and said that JP's lecture was particularly interesting. So I wanted to pass that on. Your lecture evidently stood out.

I feel special.

I know I fail at LJ... but i promise I read my friends page lots :-)

( Follow me for quizes )
Maybe i'll actually write a real update sometime

As always, I'm slow to update my livejournal... Oh well. I've had a reasonably good couple of weeks (last nights breakdown not withstanding).

Over the 4th, N and I went home to visit my parents. We had to leave Sunday afternoon seeing as he works at a church so I ran the projection at my church. Yes, I go to one of those churches that projects the words on a screen during the service ;-) I'm actually haveing way to much fun with the slides lately, but this has been resulting in a lot of compliments which makes me feel good. I'm running them again this week and I'm looking forward to getting the creative juices flowing again.

Anyway, so the trip home was fantastic. The purpose of the trip was really 2 fold. N's birthday and our three-month was the previous week so I had arranged with my parents for us to go see Wicked downtown. We did that monday night. It was amazing! Our seats weren't fantastics, but thats was ok. The show was well done and it was alot of fun. We spent monday day shopping at my parent's house for stuff for N to wear, and he actually got a few pretty nice shirts from my brother which was really cool. N left with my car the next day so he would be back in time for a tuesday evening gathering and then work on wednesday. I spent the rest of the week at home eagerly awaiting the 2nd reason I went home. While home, I spent a lot of time relaxing and not as much time working as I should have... doh! but thats ok. Sammy ended up staying at my parents house most of the week because for some crazy reason he marked all over my mom's friends house (we think it was the 2 girl dogs...) Anyway, we went to a baseball game, which was fun, though the home team got pummled and we left early. I spent some quality time with demipatra and stickpiano which was nice too.

Anyway, so the second reason I went home was to go wine tasting with my Dad. His friend owns a resturant and they do tasting meals every 6 weeks to 2 months. We tried a line up of wines that was really fantastic and the chef (also a family friend) made somre really really fantastic food, like veil wellington. The extra week at home was totally worth getting to spend that night with my dad.

The advisor (and everyone else in my office!) is on a field trip with a project today which makes me happy, but I really should get to work so I have something to show for my week at home ;-)

Hopefully the weather doesn't get me down!

Man, so life lately has been a little crazy. I've been working like crazy for stuff at church, which I'm really enjoying, but is taking me away from getting school work done. For some reason this summer I've not been motivated at all. This is highly unfortunate because my advisor wants me to prelim at the end of the fall semester and I really need to make a lot of progress before then. In related news, I have 2 paper submissions planned for late September which still need a lot of work and really should be monopolizing my time.

Part of me is really looking forward to being home next week. It'll be nice to get out of town for a little while. On the down side I'm going to miss my boy a lot. I'm also sort of stressing about what to do with Samwise while I'm gone. The original plan was to have the boy watch him for me, but he is really nervous about it. It wouldn't be the first time he watched my dog for me while I'm out of town, but last time he did he had a nervous breakdown so now he is worried about staying in my house by himself for the week. I'm probably going to try to investigate some other options today or tomorrow so that the boy doesn't have to worry about it too much. Unfortunately, money is really tight so boarding him for the whole time I'm gone might not be a good option.

I think my advisor is upset that I'm going to be gone next week... I'll have to make sure I get lots of work done while I'm home (which probably won't be too hard seeing as I won't have a car for most of the week)

I want one that can joke about giving me a lobotomy

Questionable Content is probably my favorite web comic. I think everone should read it. The boyfriend thinks that the drawing at the beginning is a little rough, but it didn't bother me, plus the art has gotten a lot better, that and its freakin hysterical!

Ok, so I was talking to Katherine yesterday and she mentioned that I hadn't updated my livejournal in a month maybe two. I've been meaning to, but I dunno, I never feel like I have anything interesting to say. I've never been great at the "whats going on" journals. I only successfully kept a paper journal once in my life, and it was during a time of extreme loneliness and depression...

Anyway, I'm not depressed or anything so maybe thats my excuse ;-)

So, what has been going on for me lately? Well, not much really. I'm still in Illinois still plugging away at earning a PhD. I'm to the stage where it is time to start thinking about what my dissertation topic should be which is still a pretty terrifying thought. My advisor wants me to prelim next semester and the systems facutly want me to prelim in the spring. The department has reformatted the prelim to be more of a dissertation proposal that before, which is good and bad. Anyway, as far as school goes that sort of the exciting stuff. I'm sort of working on 3 different projects that have the potential to be interesting, and also the potential to converge so hopefully that will help me formulate my dissertation topic.

Life itself is pretty busy. I've been working on redesigning the web page for my church and its going to be really sweet when its finally finished, which will be reasonably soon, though I need to beat IE into submission as I always do when doing web page designs. Church has actually been what is keeping me the busiest. We are doing some renovations to the building this summer that are going to be sweet when they are done, but they are distracting me from work, not that I really mind, until I have to meet with my advisor and get yelled at for slacking... (That's happening here shortly...)

The biggest news in my life is that I have a boyfriend! We started dating just after spring break. We meet at church and have been hanging out a lot. After going on a spring break trip we decided to try out dating. Most people who knew us through church weren't suprised, except that it took us long enough to start dating. Anyway, things there are going well :-)

Well, I need to go meet with my advisor now... Hopefully I come out of it in one piece...

So, today, while checking my blogs I came across this post on Tinley's religious blog. Apparently, there is a religiously themed amusement park known as The Holy Land Experience. I remember hearing about Pat Robertson's amusement park in the Holy Land and it made my head hurt lots. I don't know why this one is different, but I sort of want to go... I think its like watching a train wreck, its horrible, but you can't help but to watch...

Wow, this new form of travel looks incredible.


According to the article, the flight across the US would take 18 hours, but the airplane is luxuriously equipped "for passengers who are more concerned with the journey than the destination."

Freaking amazing... I wanna fly to Europe on that thing!

Well, things are going Ok in my world, minus the fact that I was so sick yesterday that I had to miss the Andrew Bird concert that I was DYING to see! My friends NN and C were going to go with me and it was going to be awesome! But enough of that. It's going to be ok because now I'm going to go to Madison and see it with my friend GN who will appreciate Andrew much better then NN and C :-D

Lets see, this weekend is a busy one so far. I'll spend the vast majority of it at the church working on stuff for the superbowl party tomorrow.

School stuff is going good. My advisor recently informed me that I was a "senior" graduate student. I'm sort of excited about it but at the same time the implications make me nervous. The other people in my group are always asking me for advice which is cool, but I don't necessarily feel like I'm qualified to help them. I guess the label isn't in correct seeing as I'm post-qual and taking my last class, but still... wow! THe other thing about be a "senior" graduate student is that my advisor and I are starting to have the "what is your thesis going to be" talks, which is a little scary. I want it to be something on privacy, but we seemed to be moving away from that. There will definitely be a privacy component to it, but I'm overall pretty happy with the direction its going. Actually we are just starting a project I'm particularly excited about so it has the potential to be a very exciting! My semester has started off like a gun shot but is finally slowing down, thank goodness!

Sometime I might post about something interesting :-)

The Rules: The first player of this game starts with the topic, five weird habits, and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says: You have been tagged (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

1. I chew on my finger nails... I can't help it
   
2. I will chew on a peice of gum for like 5 hours before discarding it
   
3. I must sort M&M's before I'll eat them. I form them into perfect groups (containing 1 of each color) and eat them in a very specific order. The same goes for Skittles
   
4. I take my computer with me everywhere!
   
5. I keep my house heated to like 65 in the winter
   

I tag: demipatra, birdwatcher5, beadgalsarita, ponkie, bee_sting

Well, tonight my puppy was sick. Now, Sam is my first pet (not counting fish) so I have very little idea of whats "normal" for a dog and what things are cause for great concern. My puppy occassionally gets ill but he is usually fine after that, but tonight was different. He got ill after some training and then I put him outside and then when he came back in he was shivering... It was frightening. I had no idea what to do. I went online and found that vomiting and shivering were symptoms of parvo, which my dog is vaccinated against. I was soo terrified so I called my friend, crying, who calmed me down enough to call the emergency vet line. I talked to a super nice person who suggested he just had a tummy ache and to just let him relax for an hour and then see if he would drink water and hold it down. Luckily he did, but I'm not going to totally feel better about it until after he has had a little food in the morning. though, i think I'm in the clear.

Now for the reason for the subject... the most difficult part of owning a dog is cleaning up after he has been ill... I have a mean gag reflex and cleaning up after him nearly makes me sick everytime...

Anyway, I think he is ok and now I'm off to bed.

Bless my friend and the nice person at the EMV for calming me down and helping me actually care for my poor puppy.

Probably a "year in review" post tomorrow...

Well, since you asked:

You can melt a crappy alumninum tea kettle by leaving it on the stove for too long. At 9:30 last night I decided I wanted tea so I put some water in the kettle and set it on the stove and then went off to chat on AIM while i waited for the water to boil. Unfortunatly, the whistle on my kettle is broken and I forgot to send a timer. At 10:30, I decided I wanted tea and remembered that I was boiling water and ran into discover a very melted tea pot. Needless to say, the biggest reason this happened was because it was a cheapy kettle. My previous kettel was left on the stove all day once and never melted.

What do you think, should I turn it into art? I was thinking of sanding the edges and hanging it on the wall and using it as a hanger for an apron or something.

Well, I think I have finally done something that merits being removed from the kitchen forever
I MELTED A TEA KETTLE
( And there's proof )

In other news, I've finished two books from my reading list... now all I need to do is update it :-) I'm also going to add "A Generous Orthodoxy" to the list. Anyone read it before?

That is all for now...

Well, just when I'm feeling motivated to do real research, The Slate is doing a series on Higher Education. I'd really like to spend my entire day reading these articles, but unfortunately I can't...

I read one article in the series this morning concerning how university education has evolved. This article is intersting because you really see the shift from the concern about undergraduate education to research institutions. Personally, I have always been a big proponent of top quality undergraduate education. I believe that undergraduates need not only breadth, but depth in education, but they also deserve to be taught by faculty who care about teaching, not faculty who only want to research. Unfortunatly, the tenure process is focused almost entirely on research. This really causes teaching to be pushed to the wayside because being a good teacher means putting aside some valuable research time and spending it on course prep and planning. Its because of this fact that the tenure process frightens me to no end. I've never felt like I'm a very good researcher, but I certainly believe that I can be a successful educator. Of course... to make things worse my department really wants us to go to top university and become top researchers, to quote an highly depressing an annoying talk, "to have a profession, instead of just a job." It saddens me that some faculty feel that teaching is not a proffession...

Anyway, thats just my opinion on that article, The Slate is also posting articles by educators around the country answer the question "What should every student know by the time he or she graduates?" I haven't read these yet, but I will and let you know the answers :-)

In other news: Pet Smart just called and wants to use my dog in some sort of portfolio. I'm happy about this because he is due for a hair cut, and I get lots of discounts on the cut. Plus, now everyone can see how adorable he is :-D

Well, it's been a while since I posted.

I got to go to Purdue for the football game yesterday. Jean and I have decided that my coming to a game with her must be a yearly thing. The game was really good fun. Neither team played very well, but at least Purdue won :-) After the game, I hung out with old friends, including tbcraig, pupiccchick, robbytime, terribean, and thisoneguy83. It was really fun to catch up and see what everyone has been up to. I was also glad to see K, my little sis :-)

Today appear to be a quiet day. I'm going to work on cleaning because my friend NJ is coming down to visit :-)

Anyways, I have to fun articles to share today. To my pleasent surprise, The Slate had an article on tea kettles today. Mostly just a comparitive thing, but I like tea and tea kettle so i was sort of amused.

The other article I found on Friday, is about gay penguins. Yes, you heard me right, Gay Penguins. (Hey, if the penguins are ok with it, why aren't we?)

I'll leave you with that for now :-)

Well, once again, Its been a while since I've posted... The last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy. I finished my paper, but now I'm in a funk (again...) I'm trying to figure out why I get this way, especially after huge deadline... but the deadline was 15ish days ago so you'd think I'd be back in the swing of things by now. I have, unfortunatly gotten behind on my homework for my class and I reallly need to catch up on it, but evertime I sit down to work on it, something pulls me away, usually the internet (evil evil thing!)

Lately, I've actually been keep up with the news, mostly from reading The Slate. A couple of weeks ago, my friend sent me an article from The Slate and I've been addicted ever since. I've also personalized my google home page so that I see what all the crazy things going on in the world are. I've been doing alot of reading on Sam Alito, and the Paris Riots. Interesting stuff, perhaps I'll write a blog entry about it sometime.

Yesterday, the random news fact of the day was that Denver legalized marajiuana possetion. I sent an IM to my crazy father about it and he didn't reply. I found out later he thought he got it by mistake... oh well, I want to hear what he thought of the whole thing.

Today's news fact probably has to do with the Paris Roits but I've decided exactly what it is... Or may be Sam Alito...

Anyways, I should probably get back to the mounds of reading I have to do today...