Northrop Auditorium

Weekend To-Do List

Long weekend! Lots of stuff to do.

• Register for "classes"
• Apply to schools - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
  
• Shovel sno - 1x 2x 3x
  
• Clean out e-mail
• Vacuum, mop, sweep
• Fix plant stand
• Order "Christmas" presents
• Sort/blog photos from the past week
• Fix Thermarest(s)
• Repair and test camping stoves
• Test filter
• Put together chlorine dioxide kit
• Make pouch for bus pass
• Inquire about returning photo map
• Send note to trip members
• Do trip tasks
• Write eBay feedback
• Fix snow shovel
• Celebrate Christmas with Erin
• Play Plants vs. Zombies
• Complain about bonehead lawyer
• Exercise
  

Incoming!

Here's the current Minneapolis weather forecast from wunderground. Hmmmmm.

	Tonight Snow. Snow accumulation around 4 inches. Lows around 25. East winds 10 to 15 mph.
	Thursday Snow. Snow accumulation of 5 to 6 inches. Highs around 30. Northeast winds 10 to 15 mph.
	Thursday Night Snow. Areas of blowing and drifting snow. Snow accumulation of 6 to 7 inches. Lows 25 to 30. Northeast winds 15 to 20 mph.
	Christmas Day Snow. Areas of blowing and drifting snow. Snow accumulation of 3 to 4 inches. Highs around 30. Northeast winds 15 to 20 mph.
	Friday Night Snow. Snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches. Storm total snow accumulation of 19 to 21 inches. Lows around 20. North winds 10 to 15 mph.
	Saturday Cloudy with snow likely. Snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches. Total snow accumulation 20 to 25 inches. Highs around 25. Chance of snow 70 percent.
	Saturday Night Cloudy with a 50 percent chance of snow. Lows around 15.

Olympia Trip

Last weekend, we flew up to Olympia, Washington to visit my granny. My mom met us there. Here are some pics.

Erin at the "Beach House" on Steamboat Island, where my Granny Lou and Papa Frank lived when I was growing up. One of my favorite places.






Dinner at the beach house: my mom, aunt Zina, Granny, cousin Darby, cousin Bridgette, me, wife Erin.

Weekend Imbecile Report

Last night I heard a loud "crunch" and looked outside to see some unidentified junk hanging off the rear bumper of the rental truck that's been parked next door for the past week. Then, a gray sedan with the passenger door missing backed into view and drove away.

I went outside to find our neighbor, Tim, on the phone with the police and so I went around the corner a bit to see if he'd stopped close by (he didn't).

Indeed, someone had (a) crashed into a parked object, (b) left their passenger door hanging of that object's bumper, and then (c) driven away.


A few minutes after the cops arrived, I overheard them saying that they'd found the car but not the driver, and there was blood in the car.

Frankly, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people whose behavior is so incredibly stupid. I hope they found the guy. I wonder if the car was stolen and that's why he ran.

The truck was bent up a bit, but probably not enough to merit any repairs.

Incidentally, this image was 2.5-3 stops underexposed and I managed to recover the above. I'm pretty impressed.

Weekend To-Do List

• Reboot
  
• Work on trip stuff
• Vacuum, mop, sweep
• Fix plant stand
• Blog/sort zoo pics, Olympia pics, truck pics
  
• Order battery
• Order Christmas presents
• Profile schools & send to reccommenders
  
• Go to REI, Ax-Man, grocery store
  
• Clean out e-mail
• Phone calls
• Go to library
• Dry spaghetti sauce
• Shoe goo Erin's boots
• Shovel sno
• Take out trash
• Do dishes
• Exercise
  

Grad Student Review

Every year, the CS department does a performance review for each of its Ph.D. students. Here's mine.

We are very pleased with the quality of your work and with the pace of your progress. We want to congratulate you and encourage you to continue doing such an excellent job. We especially note the unusual and significant achievement of having originated and led the development of Cyclopath, a system that has (a) earned significant real-world usage, (b) resulted in deep collaborations with local government and non-profits, including a sizable grant from the Metropolitan Council, as well as (c) serving as a platform for carrying out excellent research. We also note the unusual and significant leadership role you have taken on the Cyclopath project, engaging in extensive informal and formal mentoring of less experienced students as well as doing large amounts of software project management. We understand that this work certainly has taken away from the amount of "pure" / narrowly construed research you could have done -- that is, you probably could have published more papers if you had not done this. However, you *still* have published a good number of very high quality papers, and the amount and type of effort you have put in have led to accomplishments are much more substantial and longer lasting than just a few (more) research papers.

We congratulate you an reaching an advanced stage in your degree program. At this point, we think you should be ready to finish and defend your thesis within the next year. Please consult closely with your advisor to develop a detailed timetable and verify that your examining committee is appropriate. You also should be seeking career guidance from your advisor if you have not done so already.

Sincerely,

Loren Terveen
Director of Graduate Studies
on behalf of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering
The University of Minnesota

The tone is interesting to me, as Loren is my advisor in addition to being the DGS.

B&W pics

Couple of images that have been floating around for a while. Both of these were taken in November. Isn't black and white fun?

These were converted using the iNDA film simulator plugin for Bibble 5.

Weekend To-Do List

• Apply to NMSU
• Search for jobs & update bookmarks
• Upgrade Cyclopath
  
• Prep for PFF class
• Clean out e-mail
• Reboot
  
• Call MSR, Marmot
• E-mail scale vendor
• Order maps for trip
• Work on trip stuff
• Vacuum, mop, sweep
• Fix plant stand
• Schedule exercise
• Exercise 2x
• Blog B&W pics, zoo pics
• Order battery?
• Go to play
• eBay K200D body
• Invoice St. Martin's
• Order Christmas presents?
  

St. Louis trip

For Thanksgiving, Erin and I drove a long 11 hours down to St. Louis to visit Joanna and Steve and their new baby Anya.

Anya being cute.

Walking in Forest Park. Joanna lost her phone, but a woman picked it up and Steve recovered it a couple of days later.

St. Louis has the City Museum, which is a jungle gym for adults plus about a zillion other things, including...

... a school bus 10 stories up where you go in and look around ...

... a 7-story slide ...

... and a Gothic watchtower, plus two airplanes you can climb in, an artificial cave with an organ in it, a giant white whale, a human hamster wheel, giant ball pits, smores, etc.... the list is basically endless. I have no idea what fraction of it we saw.

Anya being cute.

Joanna and Anya.