Well, this feels like old news at this point, but I have officially graduated with a Ph.D. in computer science from UNC. It's great to be done, but man, writing the dissertation was definitely the hardest thing I've done in my life.

The worst of it was in the spring. My goal was to submit a substantially completed draft to my committee at least two weeks before May 5th, the date I scheduled for my defense. That's a soft requirement for defending, because the committee (a group of 5 Ph.D.'s) needs to read it before the defense. Well, that was a mountain of work. Most (maybe 80%) of the research was done before the semester started, but going that last mile and writing it up is so dreadfully boring and hard.
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In retrospect, it really was a pretty painful time of my life. Probably the most painful and difficult so far. The stress was pretty intense at times. But, praise God, I'm finished. It feels amazing to be done. But now I understand why people are "A.B.D." (or "all-but-dissertation"), and why some take 10 years to finish. And I gotta say, I don't recommend getting a Ph.D. Not unless you're serious, and can work through the pain to get to the prize.

I help out with the jr. high youth group at church. My youth pastor, Jeremy, happens to be a pretty big football fan. Whenever we have a retreat or something, there's almost certainly going to be a football game at some point.

Well, Jeremy, joking around and talking big, told one of the high schoolers that GraceQuest (his youth group) could beat Cross Culture (the high school youth group) in flag football by three touchdowns, and, well...she called his bluff. They set the date for February 1.

So off we went, practicing every other week or so, strategizing, etc. We had some fairly big teens, and some fairly fast teens, and our leaders were faster, so we figured we had a chance. Plus, Jeremy knows the sport really well and is a decent quarterback.

Well, to make a long story short, we beat them. Their QBs didn't anticipate our wily zone defense, and we got at least three or four interceptions. Jeremy had a pretty thick playbook, and we learned routes during practice. They might have been bigger and stronger (on average), but we were smarter. :-)
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Wow, it's been ages since I've posted! I suddenly find myself with a bit more spare time on my hands (more on that in a later post), so I'm going to see if I can address that sticky note titled "Pending LJ Posts". I'm gonna skip the back-dating and just speak in past tense.

Early January marked a change at the Chicopee house. We got our 7th roommate. With only (!) five rooms, that means some people get to double up. I was an obvious choice because I had the master bedroom (one of the biggest), and it had its own bathroom. Plus, I happen to know and like the guy who was moving in. Matt is a cool dude with a passion for life, and I count him a good friend.

I had my doubts about having a roommate at first. I thought I might get stir-crazy without a place of my very own to retreat to. My little sanctuary, you know. But it was totally fine. And I gotta say, it was real sweet come rent time. The gas bill was higher during the winter than my portion of the rent.

Matt only lived with me a couple of months, though. Sadly, Simon and Alisha broke up, and Simon decided he wanted to move away. She was the reason he moved down here in the first place. So now he's back in Connecticut, and Matt took his room. That was late February.

About a month ago, Justin moved out, too. He's going to India for a year to work with Freedom Firm, a group that rescues (mostly minor) girls out of sex slavery in India. I'm so excited for him, and I'm so impressed that he's giving up a year of his life to help others. I can't wait to hear about how God uses him there. Anyway, he's leaving for India in a couple of weeks, but since mid-to-late June he's been with his folks in Dallas, earning some extra money. His room is all empty, and it echoes. It's sad.

Not long after Justin left, Nick got married and moved out. I'm really happy for him and Lindsay. Thankfully, at least Nick is still in the area.

Yesterday, Matt left too. He's been thinking for quite a while about moving out to Colorado and join Brad (a former pastor from Grace) in Colorado. Brad is starting a Chi Alpha campus ministry in Colorado Springs, and Matt is going to join him. But anyway, he's moved all his stuff out, and now his room is empty, too. Sadness!

In fact, even Darnell is gone at the moment. He's in Transnistria (in eastern Europe) with a couple dozen people from church on a missions trip. So out of the originally 7 dudes at Chicopee, Lucas and I are the only ones left! Darnell will move out by the end of August (he wants his own place). Lucas is looking for a job and a reason to stay in the area. If he doesn't find one and decides to move elsewhere, I'll be the only Chicopite left.

We did, however, decide to renew the lease. That would be madness, except we have a whole new group of guys who will be living here next year. Everything is lined up, and all we have to do now is sign a couple forms. It will be me, Mario, Stephen, Chris (Stephen's younger brother), Jeremy, and maybe Lucas. Chicopee lives!

Ever since starting grad school in North Carolina, I have always driven my car home to Arkansas for Christmas. It's about a 14 hour trip, which I usually make in one day. This time, I flew home. I thought that would make for a shorter overall travel time. I thought wrong.

I got up at about 5:15am, leaving the house by 5:35 to catch a 7am flight. I flew to Little Rock by way of Baltimore, arriving right on time at 12:15pm. I had an old family friend on the way to pick me up and drive me back to Russellville, about 75 miles away, all interstate.

Problem was, there had been a winter storm in Arkansas the night before, and the roads were really bad, with thick ice in places. It took my ride about 5 hours to get to Little Rock (instead of the typical 1 hour). He picked me up at about 4pm, and we didn't get home until 11. Having been up since 4:15 Central Time, I was completely wiped out, and I am currently very glad to be home!

I'm no longer dating Tiffany. She thinks I'm probably not the one for her. It's been a couple of weeks since then. I'm happy to share more, but I won't here, so feel free to email me backchannel. I just figured I ought to say something here, since I had posted here earlier that we were dating.

Living at Chicopee has been a dream. The six of us (including Darnell, who moved in a month or two ago) get along famously. We often hang out together in the evening, whether we have guests or not. And three nights a week, we do push-ups together.

At a house meeting a while back, I proposed that the Chicopites go on a retreat together. I figured we could go hiking or something. Lucas took that idea and ran with it, and, a couple of weekends ago (Dec 5-6), we went to his grandmother's old homestead in the mountains of western North Carolina. His parents live in nearby Mars Hill, and his Aunt and Uncle live right up the road.

So, Friday afternoon, five of us (excluding Darnell) piled into my Lincoln and hit the road. Spirits were high as we set out. We talked about life, love, and God. We played a car-friendly game of Clue on the way, which we customized for Chicopee: which of the roommates did it, in which room of the house, with which weapon? (Weapons included a knife, a bow and arrow, a bow staff, ninja throwing stars, a guitar, and a blowgun--all of which we actually have lying around at Chicopee.) When somebody got it, the game-master had to tell the story of what happened.

After arriving at the homestead, we snarfed some pizza, courtesy of Lucas's fabulously hospitable parents (who also left drinks, fruit, pies, muffins, etc, as well as bring us breakfast in the morning). We played hold 'em, but we didn't have any chips, so we tore up paper napkins and wrote "5" on some of them. After that, at around midnight, we bundled up, grabbed the flashlight, and set out for the family graveyard at the top of a hill overlooking the house. It was so quiet! I can't remember the last time I heard silence like that! And the stars--beautiful! Man, it is good to get away from civilization sometimes. We got back to the house, goofed off for a while, then plugged in "Home Alone" and crashed. (I forgot that the music in "Home Alone" is actually pretty good. I wasn't surprised to see that John Williams wrote it.)

Saturday, we woke up, ate breakfast, bundled up, and set out for the hills. Lucas showed us his mom's favorite prayer rock growing up, but we went far beyond that. Calling it a hill might be a bit of an understatement--all told, it was surely at least a half-hour's hike to the top, in places steep enough that footing was difficult. At one point, Justin and I raced to the top of a ridge--and boy, did we regret it! That mountain air was cold and sparse, and we were both feeling kind of sick by the time we arrived.

I had the idea to take turns yelling as loud as possible--another thing you can't really do in the city. Then we resumed hiking until we got to the summit. There were a lot of smallish downed trees there, and we had great fun hurling logs and rocks down the hill. We eventually descended, meeting a beagle on the way that very obviously had a litter of puppies at home. She accompanied us for a while. I bet she was glad to get away from those rude, rowdy pups for a little while.

We ate lunch at Lucas's aunt and uncle's place. His parents joined us. Afterwards, Uncle Randall took us to the barn next door to shoot a .22 at some targets. Lucas seems to be good at pretty much anything he does, so I wasn't altogether surprised when he nailed the target three times in a row. After that, it was time to leave so that people could be back in time for evening parties and choir practices.

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Yesterday, I drove up to Washington & Lee University on my own initiative. I've applied to be a computer science professor there, so I was curious about the place. I also wanted to connect with Rick Peterson, the CTO of the university and an old friend of my advisor's.

W&L is in Lexington, VA, about 3 1/2 hours from Chicopee. I left the house at 6 am, before the crack of dawn. The drive up was pretty throughout, and stunningly beautiful in places. Lexington is in a valley between the Blue Ridge mountains and another Appalachian range. I was seriously in awe of the scenic beauty, both on the way there and the way back (for which I took a different route).

I arrived at W&L for a campus tour at 10. It didn't take long--the campus isn't very big. There are only about 1700 students there (all undergrads), not including ~500 law students. The campus is very pretty, and I think either the campus as a whole or else several buildings are listed in the national historic register. The campus was spared the torch during the civil war because the main building had a statue of George Washington on it. In fact, the Lee Chapel has the original copy of the first portrait of Washington on display. Robert E. Lee, who was the university's president for a few years after the Civil War, is buried there, in Lee Chapel, along with his family and his horse Traveler.

The culture is really awesome. People are really friendly. There's a rule that you look people in the eyes and greet them when you run into them on campus. Also, people really abide by a strong honor code. Lying, cheating, or stealing will get you expelled (for serious). Two great implications of this: students choose when they take their final exams (during the final week, that is), and people leave their laptops and stuff lying around wherever, because nobody will take it. Dr. Lambert, the head of the CS department, said that he accidentally left his bike parked in front of the library, with no chain or anything, and it was still there when he went looking for it a month later.

I met up with Rick at noon, and we had lunch at the cafeteria on campus, which was actually pretty good. He was so helpful to talk to. He also introduced me to several of the CS faculty. (Also, I met the technical support dude for the department, who has climbed 7 of the world's 9 tallest peaks, including Everest.) I'm hoping that getting to meet them (and actually spending a fair amount of time talking with Dr. Lambert) will help my chances there. I would really love to work there...

ETA: apparently they weren't impressed, because they did not invite me back for an interview. Ah well. Best of luck to 'em. I'm sure they'll do well.

Last weekend, I flew home to spend Thanksgiving with my family and my dear friends the Remer family. It was a great time, and a really refreshing break. Highlights include:

• Reading all of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and most of Zanna's Gift by Orson Scott card (who I'm starting to think is an egomaniac) on the flight home Thursday morning. Mom let me borrow both of these, and they were both really good.
• Meeting up with the entire Remer clan at the airport (all 11 of 'em, including 6 kids, 2 in-laws, and a grandkidlet/cutie pie), and grabbing some lunch at a nearby McDonald's that I think wasn't entirely thrilled about serving us on Thanksgiving Day.
• Enjoying a delicious Thanksgiving meal with Mom, Dad, Krissie, and Richard, courtesy of Cracker Barrel's cooks and Mom's wallet.
• A good conversation with Scott (the oldest son) about life, God, girls, etc, before falling asleep Thursday.
• Going to Wal-Mart to get a football, then tossing it around at the Lock & Dam park with Peter and Scott. Chinese fire drill on the way home!
• Meeting up with my old friend Alan, who is leaving with his wife pretty soon to be missionaries to Turkey.
• A YUMMY meal of pot roast, mmmm! Thanks Mom!
• Going to church with everybody, and seeing a lot of old friends there. Whatta-burger (a Russellville tradition)--thanks Dad!
• Another yummy meal of stew--thanks again Mom!
• Meeting Warren and Daniel in Conway for lunch, then walking around the UCA campus.
• Wonderful, heart-felt conversations with wise people: Dad, Mom, Miss Gina.
• Reading most of State of Fear by Michael Crichton on the flight home. This book pretty much single-handedly convinced me of the fallacy of a global warming crisis. VERY interesting read, and a tight story, too.

As part of the ongoing Chicopee Party Series, we threw an All Saints Day party on All Saints Day--Saturday, November 1st. We were going to throw a Halloween party, and have plenty of scary surprises in store for everybody, but the church had a big Acts of Kindness event at Franklin St. and we didn't want to compete with that.

What happens at an All Saints Day party, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Bobbing for apples. Pumpkin carving. Homemade apple cider. A campfire outside. We didn't get around to doing the caramel apples, unfortunately. A good time was had by all, for sure.

The bobbing for apples was quite a scene. People were understandably reluctant to stick their heads in a tub of cold water or make a fool of themselves, so I kicked it off with a time of 9 seconds. Not bad, eh? :-) But, several people got one in like 3 seconds. Poor Nick didn't get one at all, so obviously we teased him mercilessly. :-)

Tiffany had just broken her foot the previous night. Poor girl. But she got around OK. Towards the end of the party, we started talking, and ended up having a really good conversation for at least a couple of hours. That was my favorite part of the evening, apples and pumpkins notwithstanding. And that might have had something to do with why we never got around to making caramel apples. :-)

In mid-October, I visited Orlando to attend the Internet Network Management Workshop (INM'08). I recently got a paper accepted there, so the trip was on my advisor's nickel. :-)

I arrived Saturday morning around 10, and got shuttled over to the rental car place to purchase some liberty. After checking in to my hotel, I went to a nice little outlet mall and found a really sharp-looking presentation outfit. The shirt has a beautiful sheen to it, and the pants look great too. All for like $40. I'm starting to understand the appeal of going shopping at a mall. You can find some really stylish clothes. (Man, I never thought I would say that!) I also bought some fudge while I was there, some to thank my advisor for sending me on the trip, and some to give to Tiffany. :-)

I then drove about an hour to the beach. I think it was Cocoa Beach. There were quite a few people there, but it wasn't as crowded as La Jolla Shores. The waves weren't all that great, because the slope was really shallow. I could probably go a couple hundred feet away from the shore line before I was in over my head. But, it was fun. I also got some reading done: Tomorrow's Professor by Richard Reis. That book has really helped me in my academic job search...

Sunday was the day of the workshop. There were only about 20 people there, so it was pretty intimate. It was small enough that people felt free to interrupt presentations with whatever questions they had, which was mostly OK. I got to meet and talk to some interesting, smart people, such as Chuck Kalmanek and Dave Maltz. I was the second-to-last presenter of the day. I think it went pretty well. I was pretty satisfied with my slides, and I think I gave a decent talk.

Afterwards, most of the workshop attendees, as well as people attending another workshop of the same conference, all hung out at the hotel and had hors d'ouvres snacks. Then, a small group, including the aforementioned Chuck and Dave, went out to Downtown Disney (which was right near the conference hotel) and had a beer. Conversation was interesting, mostly about politics. Everybody there (not just the famous figures) was fun to talk to. I particularly enjoyed listening to Ashley, an Australian grad student, because he had such an awesome accent. :-) (He also clearly shared my philosophy of Powerpoint presentations: figures, few words, animations galore...)

My overall impressions of Orlando were pretty negative. It's not an attractive city, and I am not a huge fan of cities anyway. It was inland, flat, not a lot of vegetation, cars, toll roads, etc. Besides, there were Disney World advertisements everywhere. They never let up! At one point there were about 8-10 billboards along the road, every 500 feet. They even had a Disney store in the conference hotel, and behind the hotel front desk there was a nice flat-panel TV showing non-stop Disney advertisements. Man...those marketeers!

"What do you want to do with your life?" It's a question I've managed to avoid so far. Instead of deciding after college, I punted for another 5 years and decided to get a Ph.D. instead.

Well, the question has surfaced again, more forcibly this time. I should, God willing, be done in May. And I can't punt again. :-)

With much soul-searching and hard thinking, I've mostly decided that I am going to try for a professorship somewhere. Specifically, at either a 4-year college or a master's institution. I don't want to work at a major or mid-major research institution, because I don't want to spend my time writing grants and sniffing around for funding. (The market for science funding is bad enough as it is, even before the recession.) And while I enjoy research (more and more all the time, actually), I think teaching is something I'm more passionate about.

Then again, I'm not dead set on that course. I know that I could be happy in a decent variety of environments. Cisco, for example, is not only a good company to work for, but they would allow me to stay in the Triangle (which I would enjoy). Who knows? Time will tell...but for now, I am pursuing a professorship.

In fact, there's one school in particular that I'm really excited about. Out of all the schools I've looked at, they're #1 on my (still-growing) list, for several reasons. I applied there a couple weeks ago. (I'd rather not name the place here, but feel free to email me backchannel.) And just today, they emailed me to set up an initial phone interview. It's nothing much to speak of yet--I'm sure I'm just one of dozens--but it is something. I'm excited! Send me your thoughts and prayers this Thursday. :-)

Alright. I'm gonna try to keep my LJ more up-to-date. Starting now.

Last weekend, five friends (Daniel, Darnell, Rachel, Faye, Tiffany) and I went to Boone. Last year, some of us went up there, stayed at Rachel's mom's house high in the mountains above Boone, and hiked Grandfather Mountain. It was such an amazing time, so we decided to do it again.

Four of the group carpooled out there, but Tiffany and I had work and couldn't leave when they did, so the two of us rode out to Boone together in her car, rocking out and talking the whole way. She was thinking she probably wouldn't go, because hiking isn't exactly a fun time when you've got a broken foot. But I twisted her arm, telling her that we would split off from the main group and have a blast in Asheville. :-)

We eventually hacked our way through the fog, missing one turn by about 10 miles, and made it to Rachel's mom's (Lisa's) house. Lisa is awesome. She's an amazing hostess, and had prepared two big pans of delicious pasta. We ate, played Uno and Jenga, the guys (& Tiffany) did pushups, and we all had a good time just staying up 'til 2am and talking together. Oh, and Lisa brought some fake mustaches for us to wear and take pictures of.

Saturday, I got up around 8:50, got a shower, and woke Tiffany up around 9:30. The other group slept in later, enjoying a leisurely breakfast of French toast (courtesy of Darnell), and they didn't leave until after noon. Tiffany and I left at 10, grabbing some breakfast in town before hitting up the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is gorgeous! That was so worthwhile! Tiffany let me drive her new Mazda 3 (woohoo!). We frequently pulled off the road to enjoy the beautiful scenery. It was a little late in the year to get the full color experience, but there were still some smatterings of bright yellow (Maple?) in places. We got to Mount Mitchell, where the road closed for repairs, but thankfully we didn't have to backtrack too far before hitting Highway 8, which took us to I-40 and then to Asheville. It really worked out well, for not having any map whatsoever. :-)

In Asheville, we arrived at Wall St around 2 and had lunch at the Laughing Seed Café, a creative vegetarian place. Surprised that I ate vegetarian? Well, I'll have you know that I actually enjoy vegetarian--of the Indian variety. :-) We then shopped at a very creative bead store (Krissie, you would have loved it!), walked around downtown (Tiffany with her boot), and perused a happenin' bookstore and coffee shop called Malaprop's, before needing to leave to meet up with the other group. My one regret is that we didn't have time to take a rikshaw ride through downtown.

We originally planned on meeting up with the other group at a Cuban restaurant in Boone, but a combination of fog/bad weather and a football game prompted them to head out early. I figured we wouldn't be able to meet them for dinner, but it actually worked out well, and we ended up in Winston-Salem at the same time, where we ate at Applebee's. After we got home, Tiffany and I watched Napoleon Dynamite at her place. Why? Because we felt like it, gosh! :-)

So, I'm dating this girl named Tiffany. :-) She goes to Grace, and I've known her for a while. She is pretty amazing, and I am liking her more and more all the time. We're growing closer all the time, although it's not yet time for a commitment, so I don't call her my girlfriend (yet). But we're both loving every step of the way so far. :-)

She is really cute, loves Jesus, loves music (with significant overlap w/ my tastes), is a lot of fun to be around, and has great character. I'm making a conscious effort to stem the gushing, here...suffice it to say that I like her a lot. :-)

So yeah...life is good. :-D

Poor girl broke her foot last Friday, though. She fell down some stairs leaving work. She's doing fine, but of course she has to wear a boot and use crutches. I've enjoyed carrying her up and down the stairs to her apartment. And yesterday, I pushed her around in a shopping cart so that she could shop for groceries. It was fun. :-)

All the Chicopee roommates are doing the hundred pushup challenge on Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Week 1 was easy, and week 2 wasn't too bad. Week 3 was challenging. Week 4 was ridiculous. And week 5 was insane! We actually repeated week 4 once, and after getting through week 5, we decided to go back through week 4. Next we'll do week 5 again, then week 6 for the first time, and then hopefully we'll be able to crank out 100 pushups in a row. We're already noticing an improvement, not only in numbers but also in physique, so that's nice. And it's great to do something as a house regularly.

In general, living at Chicopee is a dream. Lucas and I have meaningful conversations several times a week. We play video games together, or sing and play guitar together, or sometimes even cook for each other. We have house meetings on Monday nights. We've yet to have a disagreement. The guys are so cool, and we just get along so well.

We also throw parties fairly often. It's pretty much the perfect party house. It even has a gas grill hooked up to the house gas line. And we'll be adding another roommate (Darnell) soon. A couple of the rooms (mine included) are big enough to easily fit two people in, so it won't be a squeeze.

Live long and live true, Chicopee!

Last weekend, several dozen young adults from GNet, Grace's young adult ministry, went on a retreat to Ocean Isle beach at the southern point of NC. Some highlights and photos:

Last Thursday, I got the wisdom teeth on my right side extracted. The bottom one broke the gumline but never came in all the way, leading to an infection. I figured it was about time to take care of that dude.

The dental insurance that the university offers is only worth it if your total annual dental expenditures fall within a narrow range, so I long ago decided not to get it. As a result, I had to pay for this out of pocket. :-/ As a result, I chose to just do local anasthetic (novocaine or lidocaine). It was over really fast! He (Dr. Jelic) shot my mouth full of the stuff, waited for about 10 minutes, and removed both teeth in about 3 minutes. I had to pack some gauze in the socket, and I will have to clean out the socket for a while, but I'm well on the road to recovery. I took prescription hydrocodone (in liquid form, interesting) for the first day, but it wasn't that bad. After the first day, I didn't even take ibuprofen. Cool! (Of course, my bank account is still hurting...)

Woohoo! My paper got accepted to the Internet Network Management Workshop. I'm going to Orlando (on my advisor's nickel)!! :-D

The workshop is Sunday, October 19th.

Last night, we convened at David and Geoff's apartment to surprise Fuller on his 21st birthday. I thought you all might enjoy seeing some photos. :-)

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Yesterday, Jeremy H. met me at my place to help me move. We went to get a big moving truck, and proceeded to load the sucker up. I think the truck was 24'. You'd think we had lots of room--and admittedly we didn't stack things up high--but we managed to mostly fill it up. I do have a substantial amount of furniture... My future roommates (Justin, Lucas, Nick, and Simon) helped, too.

After arriving at Chicopee, we noticed that something had apparently broken on the ramp, and we couldn't deploy it. Thankfully, our neighbor (who lives in the apartment above the garage) was there, and he went straight to work on fixing it. What a nice guy!

I bought (not quite enough) pizza for everybody, to thank them for their help moving my stuff. And now I'm here, at 4508 Chicopee Trail, Durham!

The house is awesome. It's 5 bedrooms, hyooge living room area, nestled among extensive woods (which I can't wait to check out!), with a decent back yard and some adult-sized homemade swings. It's such an amazing house, and I'm so excited to be living with such a stellar group of guys. We are going to have such a good time here, I just know it!

They kicked Jay and I out of our office a few weeks ago to prepare converting it into a shared office space for a research group in the department. I had been there for 3 years, and Jay for longer. The temporary office they moved us into was on the third floor. I was pumped: I finally got a window office!

But today [might have the back-dated date wrong... -jst], we moved into our new office in the brand-spanking-new wing. It's sweet! The space is all configurable, with movable shelves attached to the walls, new furniture, a new whiteboard, and...a hip-to-ceiling WINDOW! I'm so excited... :-)

It's a pretty nice view, too. At the moment, they're erecting a big crane in preparation for constructing another building in the new science complex. By the looks of it, it will be a big building, too...