The Research Abides

Our Center hosts a two month research program every summer for thirty or so undergraduates, and a lesser number of high school students and teachers. It's a surprising amount of work for those of us who volunteer as mentors, but is also a fair amount of fun, and always satisfying. The students come from all over the country, from colleges of all descriptions.

My mentat this summer is a student from our school who just finished her freshman year. She is intelligent, ambitious, overprivileged (drives a nicer car than I do), and reminds me of my favorite philosophy professor's observation that, "no one on Earth knows more than a college sophomore." She had a great time and tied for first in the poster competition, but that's not important right now.*

I do all of the grocery shopping. Image from here.

We built a rapport, since she exudes the insecurity inherent to being nineteen and I am generally awesome. During one of her daily drop-ins to my office she mentioned that I had acquired a nickname among the summer students. She said something about her mentor, and several of the students replied, "You mean Jeff Bridges?" She is too young and normal to know which of his roles had likely inspired the comparison, but I knew immediately. I guess there are some things we really don't live down.

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* And don't call me Shirley.

Watch watch

So I've been wearing two watches for two months now, mostly just to see what people would say. Know what people have said? Nothing. Nothing at all. Not a single person has made a comment. I think I've caught a couple of people noticing, but mostly I think we pay so little attention to each other that most people don't even realize that there is anything different.

Also, I got a paper accepted to a conference someplace really nice, which is a first for me. The best I've ever done before was Tampa. Typically I end up going to Dallas, or Alabama somewhere. I won't say exactly where this one is, but they have poi. And our President claims he was born there. My ex-wife was also born there. I guess no place is perfect.

Wax on, wax off

Most of my life I have been known as a "visionary type," or "abstract thinker." Generally, these have not been compliments. My graduate school advisor called me his "philosopher student" one time, which I still insist on interpreting as a good thing. A few years ago, one of the directors at our company asked me to come into a software requirements meeting he was holding and "do some of that crazy-talking you do."

I realize now that I am a rank amateur. My boss is internationally famous for visionary thinking, and uses  words like "aspirational," "transformational," and "entangle," often in the same sentence. We've been working on a grant proposal for the past few weeks, but he's been busy with other things, so I've been doing most of the writing. Reading through it this morning, I realized it sounds awfully pedestrian. I was very tempted to send a message asking him to run through it and add some of that crazy-talking.

Up from the Depths

Yesterday was a hard day. It wasn't necessarily a bad day -- or at least it won't have been when it's all said and done -- but it was a hard day. A hard day at the end of an intense few weeks at the end of a long summer. I drank two too many glasses of wine last night, just so I would remember today how hard of a day was yesterday.

I have been pushing since the beginning of the summer to have a paper ready to submit to this major academic conference that is particularly relevant to my research group and our field. It's one of two or three such opportunities that come along in a given year, and arguably the single most important. I have spent the last three weeks or so thinking of virtually nothing else. Up too early, in bed too late, hunched in front of one computer screen or another* morning and night. Too many fast food runs and evening glasses of red to shut my mind off for just an hour or two.

The deadline was yesterday. After spending most of the day reading and talking and editing and talking some more it suddenly became apparent that we needed to pull the plug. The writing was fine, but we just didn't have the results we needed to make the paper something we wanted to put our names on. I turned off the computer, came home, had a few drinks and made bread. The bread was awesome, by the way. I learned how to make kaiser rolls, and there's a lot of banging of dough involved.

There is really no feeling quite like the end of a long, hard project. And writing -- even research writing -- is personal enough that you get pretty wrapped up in it. And when it's finally over, they all seem to feel different. Some make you want to shout, and others make you want to scream. A few smell like napalm in the morning, and some end up smelling like the men's room in a cowboy bar at the end of rodeo season. And then there are those that don't smell like anything.

A project that neither succeeds nor fails is particularly unsatisfying. The work I did is probably not wasted, and plans are already underway for continuing to work to have something even better for the next opportunity in three months, or six, or whenever it is. But there's a process to this, a steady buildup of heavy breathing and sweat and focus. It's not supposed to end just because someone says, "time's up."

One way or another, it's back to the normal rhythm of life. I will go to the gym for the first time in a month, eat some vegetables, clean the house and go back to my every day. At least until the next time.
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* I counted just now, and there are seven different computers in different places that I think of as mine. Though to be fair, I only use five on a regular basis.**

** This is ridiculous

Best computer science paper title ever!

"Dynamic Taint Analysis for Automatic Detection, Analysis, and Signature Generation of Exploits on Commodity Software"

Thank you James Newsome and Dawn Song of Carnegie Mellon.

An Inconvenient Truth

You know what sucks about the Universe? It's the whole "arrow of time, events have to happen in a particular order" thing. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I have woken up frustrated that I am not a trans-dimensional being.

For example, there's this research paper that I'm currently writing on such a short deadline that I'm embarrassed to tell anyone the due date. And I don't embarrass easily, believe me. If you have doubts, keep reading. Anyway, the thing about research papers is that they are usually written to report the results of work that has already been performed. At least that's the theory. The inconvenient thing about this one is that I haven't done the work yet. At least not all of it. But I know what I'm going to do -- more or less -- and I know that it's going to work -- more or less -- and what more do you need, really? I mean, these things always work out, right?

Why don't I just do the work, you ask? Well, I need to get a draft of the paper to my co-author to review, which is probably going to take as long as it would take to do the work. So if I could just finish the paper and then do the research then I could maximize efficiency and minimize wasted time and have a chance in Hell of making the deadline. But alas, stupid spacetime has to be four-dimensional, like that's going to get anything done.

You know what else sucks about the Universe? Gravity. Gravity is a harsh mistress. I walked out of my lab yesterday and someone had just mopped the floor, so I thought it would be appropriate to fall down. And I don't mean "tripped and stumbled against the desk" fall down. I mean "lost your balance ice skating, high kicking and windmilling arms" fall down. The most amusing part was seeing the "Caution: Wet Floor" sign at the end of the hallway as I lay there trying to decide if I was hurt. I wasn't. I just ended up with one of those face of the Virgin Mary stains on my pants.

So don't talk to me about the Universe this week. The Universe is on my shit list.