the curious zen of steady-state nervous breakdown

i have no idea why it still strikes me as somehow strange---since by all rights after having been through the cycle some umpteen billion times, one would expect that i should be accustomed to it by now---but there alway seems to come a point where the to-do list becomes so ridiculous or impossible that the part of my brain which controls accellerated heart-rates and associated freak-out factors just shuts down from the overload.

and this, naturally, provides a perfect explanation for the fact that i find myself susceptible to the "paralysis of procrastination," hence my journal-writing right now and not work-doing...

the whole "deer-in-the-headlights" phenomenon amuses me somewhat. why don't we take action to try and save ourselves from the impending doom until it's too late, or hopefully only nearly so? has the imminent danger caused our subconscious to throw in the towel? or is it more like a calculated rest before a sprint?

okay, philosophizing aside, work is kinda sucky. today i need to pull a presentation out of thin air for tomorrow which will supposedly summarize my thesis topic in 20 minutes. the good news is that it's only 20 minutes, and that 20 slides are probably doable in a day. the bad news is that my thesis topic is still so ill-defined that i'm not even sure i can adequately summarize what i've done over the last three years in 20 minutes, much less find a way to tie it all together in a coherent manner. but then maybe this will be a good exercise which might help me to better define it, who knows.

since i started by mentioning something that struck me as strange, here's another one: four years seemed like an interminably long time when i signed on to start my phd, and yet now, after three years, i feel like i have hardly anything to show for it, and the fact that alcherio has pushed the deadline back to the middle/end of 2008 actually seems like a reassuring thought rather than an annoying delay. i think i'm starting to understand why the average duration of a phd is so long. hopefully now that the webots simulation (with omnet++ radio plugin and jim's sound propagation framework) appears to be basically working (pending slightly more rigorous verification) i'll finally be able to just start crunching out results that might even be publishable. but of course now that i finally have the proper tools, suddenly i seem to be coming up short of ideas, but hey, any port in a storm, right?

okay, time to go back and start conjuring slides. wish me luck. hope the zen sticks around long enough for me to get it all finished up; it's far more pleasant to work while deep-breathing rather than hyperventilating. </captain-obvious>

random recount of semi-relevant recent events

okay, it's been two weeks, which means i should probably make a note of things that have happened before i get so far behind that i forget (actually, i'm getting old, so i've probably already forgotten things, but still). so, without going into too much detail:

1. announced that thanksgiving will be on december 2nd. realized shortly afterwards that there was already a choral rehearsal scheduled for the same afternoon, that included several of the people i had invited... anyway, it stays on december 2nd, because i know martin is coming from berlin, and its looking like christian will come from copenhagen as well.

2. tried to find a place to host it. realized shortly after that between planning only one month ahead, instead of two like last year, and moving it to a saturday instead of a sunday, so as to better accomodate those coming in from out of town, all of the refuges in the area have been booked since june, basically. luckily, karen has offered to bail me out by hosting us at her fantastically splendiferous house just outside lausanne. (now i just have to think of a suitable gift for thanking her.)

3. our little informal yoga club is still going strong (yannick, karen, krister, and myself). we had been doing friday afternoons, but the gym is pretty busy so it's hard to find a place, and also karen has started taking a climbing class at noon on fridays, so two major sporting events in one day is a bit much. in response to this, she suggested moving it to thursday, but on thursday i teach lab from 4-6pm and have rehearsal at 7, so i suggested early morning. yesterday i got them to come at 7:30am, but they were whining like you wouldn't believe. :) not sure what we'll eventually converge to, but i'm sure it will work out. i was actually liking the idea of switching to the mornings, since ideally i would like to be developping the habit of doing it more often and more consistently. (remember michael hamilton told me i really need to be doing it four days per week for six months to see major improvement from where i am.)

4. i've got bruises all up and down my forearms from karate practice on wednesday.

5. the lab i'm teaching this term is actually pretty fun. it's the very first introductory CS course, so for once it's actually stuff where i can pretty much say with absolute confidence that i can handle any question they could possibly throw at me.

6. as much as it shames me (enormously) to admit it, there are actually a few television shows that i really like now, and against my better judgement, i've allowed myself to get pretty much completely sucked in. "heroes" and "veronica mars" continue to be consistently the most amusing and awesome things i've seen in quite some time. i wonder how many "hail mary"s i deserve for confessing that...

7. i'm sorely tempted to buy the new nintendo just to support what looks like *phenomenal* research into user-interface design, even though i know i wouldn't have time to use it, and even if i did (which i would probably make, because that's how screwed up my priorities are), i definitely shouldn't if i want to ever graduate.

8. last weekend i regenerated the cantus table throwing out examples of tritone outlining, which nixed another 300,000 or so. by tonight all the ionian and dorian images and accompanying midi files should be complete, i just have to update the version of mysql and the php engine on my computer at work so i can actually show them to you guys.

9. icgs has finally responded to my request and consented to "legitimize" my certificate translations for the italian consulate. they had the translator sign all of them, now i need to try to call the lady again today to confirm whether or not they need to be notarized as well...

10. i inherited an abandonned bicycle (free is a very good price), but the rear derailer and associated gear shift is all fucked up, so i'm going to stop by the school's bike club meeting this afternoon to see if i can get any advice on where to find replacement parts. what worries me is that i'm pretty sure i could get the parts from nashbar for $20-30, but they might cost several hundred francs here... and i don't think my free bike is worth quite that much. eh, i guess worst case, i can get some parts while i'm home in december visiting my parents.

okay, i've probably skipped something important, but ten is a nice number, and i need to get some work done, so that's where we'll stop for now.

applying to grad school, or "how i learned to stop worrying and implore people to make my life miserable"

okay, so it's not nearly as bad or as melodramatic as the title suggests, but i thought it was a clever idea for a title anyway. so there. maybe someday i'll even get around to actually seeing the movie...

and now we continue with "chris's most sagest advices for anyone considering graduate school."

1. be absolutely sure it's really what you want to do. hahahahahahahahahaha. okay, sorry, that's just hilarious. it's the first impulse of what to say for pretty much anyone who's been there (including me), but also utterly useless for the person asking. you have no idea what you're getting into, so there's really no way for you to make an informed decision. besides, the vast majority of people who go are just doing it to postpone their integration into "real" society for as long as possible anyway.

2. opinions may differ on this, but i'm discussing my experience here, and it's biased. deal with it. so, myself having been 50% of the aforementioned "school may be bad but at least it's familiar" mentality, and the other 50% vain "hrmmm, 'Dr.' has a nice ring to it" s-o-b (also known as the "mmmm, titles... shiiiiiny." distraction), i pretty much took the first opportunity that dropped in my lap. looking back, i'm pretty sure that this was not the most prudent thing to do. i'm starting to think that in order to really be successful at a phd, it's basically required to be obscenely passionate about your topic. such that you actually want to spend your spare time doing it, for example (like my computer generated music tomfoolery). i know nikolaus thinks about algorithms and such for his robots outside the office (quite a bit even, it seems). me, on the other hand, i prefer to leave work at work. often i spend inordinantly large amounts of time at work, but i don't really give it any thought when i'm at home. that, and, well, sensor networks may be cool and all, but they certainly wouldn't leave any gaping hole in my life were someone to take them away from me; let's just leave it at that.

3. possibly the most important by many orders of magnitude: make sure that the project you are working on/under (most likely where your funding is coming from) specifies a *concrete deliverable.* even if the application is stupid (like nikolaus's turbine inspection task), you'll be forced to work towards something, and the "research" will fill itself into the blanks. i seem to have gotten myself stuck in a position where i'm being funded by alcherio's slush fund, and every time i try to do something, the response is some variation on "no, that's not really it, why don't you try something else." which, while discouraging, would even be okay were it not for the eventual (inevitable) point where he realizes that you don't have as many publications as he would have wanted/expected, and freaks out because we're "not making progress," though somehow still has no idea where or how he wants to move forward. if, however, there was external pressure to get some ridiculous system working, regardless of the potential research interest, i'd at least have a solid, tangible goal to work towards, most likely with reasonably obvious steps that need to be taken... yeah, well, that's not the case. learn from my mistakes.

4. once you've chosen a topic, find a way to get to know a professor or two that specializes in whatever it is that you're interested in. using your friends to get personal introductions is also highly recommended, but of course may not always be possible. (hint: join darbnet, you'll like it anyway, and eventually it will probably be an excellent venue for asking if anyone knows someone who wants a phd student in field XYZ.)

5. that's probably about it, but a list of five somehow seems nicer than a list of four, so i'll add that you shouldn't forget to consider the other non-related benefits of certain schools/locations as well. i, for instance, am extremely happy that i got the opportunity not only to live in a different country but also to learn a new language. quite frankly, this is probably more important to me, and may even end up being more useful to me in my life than my actual phd. then there's the little detail about compensation. assume for the moment that you're pursuing a phd in the sciences (since getting someone to pay you to study humanities is not likely to happen in this universe). the research stipends that i'm aware of in the states vary wildly, but tend to hover around the poverty line nonetheless. on the other hand, i paid off all my undergraduate loans within approximately two and a half years, while they were still in deferment, since i'm still technically a student. this, my dear friends, is what we in the business refer to as a "really fucking great feeling." which admittedly may have something to do with the fact that paying interest is against my religion, but still, it's pretty damn cool, and i'm proud of myself for it. so, yeah, you're clearly not going to get rich by going to grad school, but at least be aware of what you'll be getting and what your options are.

okay, doug, now it's your turn, since i've been asking about what you've been doing for OVER FOUR MONTHS NOW, and so far you've written me a couple of comments asking me questions, which are fine and welcome, but not terribly informative. so yeah, what the hell are you doing now that you've graduated, how was your europe trip, and tell me more about what you're thinking about grad school.

hopefully that's enough chastisement for now. [smirk]