No really, good things happen in GradShitTownVille

I ordered two bras online. They were both on sale. They both fit.

What do you want to hear first?

The good news? Or the bad news?

Good news

The grant that I wrote for my advisor was accepted. That's right, rather than spending time actually relaxing over Winter break, I was a stress-case about an NSF proposal. Fortunately, it paid off. Now I can relax a little more during my god-damned-well-deserved summer break in July.

Bad news

I got a paper rejection last week. One of the reviewers gave the classic 4 line,

"This paper is inadequate. It is only a survey. It's not awesome enough for the awesome journal of awesomeness. I do not recommend it for publication."

Where do people learn how to write these reviews?

As a result, I'm feeling a little stuck. I don't feel inspired to work on my paper due in September. I don't feel inspired to rework this rejected paper and resubmit it. I'm not inspired at all.

Given such lack of inspiration, instead of working on research today, I spent five hours installing track lighting at the community radio station. Turns out, being the daughter of an electrician, I'm one of the most highly skilled volunteers at that place. At one point, someone asked,

"Could I have the wire cutters?"

I replied, "You mean the diags or the Kleins?"

Confused look.

At least I have another fall-back if this PhD doesn't work out.

Awesome functions

Over the phone, the boyfriend and I laugh at horrible research proposals.

Me: I think I'll work on writing a "Do-Over" system, so that when something bad happens in the computer, it will just do it over, and everything will be fine.

Bf: I'm going to write a "No Take-backs" function that will increase security of a system and enforce safety protocols.

Me: I'm going make a "Triple-Dog-Dare" function that will cancel out your "No Take-backs" function.

Dilbert-Style Management

I was in industry for a handful of years. Back then, I didn't read Dilbert for the same reason I don't read the Ph.D. comics today. These comics that others find so funny, I find utterly depressing. They just reflect things in my life that I find miserable. I had the pointy-haired boss. I was Alice, always trying to manage my temper. Now I have the demanding advisor. I watch people piss away several years trying to graduate. Why sit and read a comic about my own pathetic life? I'd rather spend my time trying make change.

In this place, I still see pointy-haired bosses. Advisors manage their groups using the same management style that I saw in my first job after graduating in 1998. I quit that job after two years.

Consider a small subsidiary of a huge company. The small subsidiary has to make enough money to be viable, otherwise, the huge company will close the subsidiary. Cut its losses. Hand out the pink slips. Reduction in force, or RIF, is what they called it at my subsidiary. I think they call it "denied tenure" here. Worse, my subsidiary had to suffer the decisions of the huge company, and yet we had to make money based on those decisions. Their decisions pitted us against Intel.

Question: How much money does a subsidiary of 45 second-rate engineers and 5 good ones make when competing against Intel?
Answer: $27.50.

Whenever we got a customer (which was once every three months or so), we had to completely reorient all our goals. Qualcomm signed a contract, so suddenly everything we did was about cellphones. I started work on a soundcard driver. Then Wacom, and everything was about tablets. That only lasted a couple of weeks, then they cancelled the order. Then Nintendo gave us a look, just a look, and we were immediately simulating Mario Bros games on our hardware. I worked on a flash memory driver.

I never finished a project at that company to any successful degree. Admittedly, the soundcard driver limped along, and I could at least read and write to flash memory. I was miserable. I had four bosses. People asked me "howseitgoing?!" all the time. I got in trouble once for yelling at one of my bosses.

"ASKING ME HOWSEITGOING EVERY HALF HOUR DOES NOT MAKE ME WORK FASTER!"

Got a letter in the file for that one.

Like I said, I quit after two years. Then I worked for the best place in the world: Dragonfly Consulting. That Dragonfly Consulting doesn't exist anymore. In the wild, dragonflies only live about four months. In a capitalist economy, it's five years.

I miss that job. Had it not been bought by an evil corporation, I might still be sitting in my little cube, working happily on hardware. I worked on small focused projects until I got them done. I learned a lot. I wrote software that brought a computer to the C-prompt: TLB handlers, boot loaders, memory partitions. I could read Assembler as fast as I could read English. I could debug anything with just two LEDs. I worked with five very smart people. It was the perfect combination of great pay with a grad-school-style working environment. Except that they insisted nobody work more than 40 hours a week. West Coast hippies.

Eight years later, history repeats itself. Again, I am suffering from the "1-big customer" management style. Again, I am miserable with meaningless work that changes faster than I change air filters in the furnace.

Except this isn't a job I can quit.

Let's just hope I can catch another Dragonfly.

Walker Percy and His Moviegoer

Last time I was this bored, I ended up dyeing my hair orange.

These days, I am a moviegoer. Ticket stubs litter my wallet. Away from Her. Mr. Brooks. Oceans 13. I try to draw lines around what I won't see. I divide the garbage from the acceptable mediocrity. Then a day comes when I am especially bored and I have to renegotiate. Hence, "Oceans 13." I hope that I can hold out against Shrek 3.

Typically, I like summers in GradShitTownVille because it's so desolate. The thousands of undergraduates have gone home. The coffee shop isn't packed with laptop surfers. Not every night is douche-bag night. But there is a price. Summer is also the time that friends typically go on internning adventures or take their final bow. My boyfriend is at Microsoft until August. My favorite movie buddy has graduated and left town. I'm left trying to figure out which of my remaining friends will put up with me. Trying to figure out if I should make new ones, or just build a hermitage.

Boredom doesn't mean a lack of work. There's plenty to do. I have two more papers planned for a September deadline. Boredom means a lack of engaging human contact. A lack of new things to see. Even when I dyed my hair orange two years ago, I had a friend to keep me company in the bathroom. She's in Chicago, wondering when I will tear myself away from work to come visit. Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to graduate as soon as fucking possible.

I bought myself a half-dozen roses tonight at the 24 hour grocery. I wasn't cheery enough for my favorite Gerber Daisies. The roses seemed elegant, dark and somber, a nice complement to my movie-going self.

Agenda

Taken from "Affectionate Technology" by Philip Agre

On a humorous, but nevertheless significant note: A friend of mine created a computer "character" that you could converse with in written English. One of the things he found that was crucial to making it seem human was that it not listen to you very carefully. It had its own agenda and invariably it would bring the conversation around to, say, its sick grandmother living in Arkansas. No matter what you talked about, eventually the grandmother that lived in Arkansas came up. It is rare that computer scientists have not-listening as a design goal--but it is a human characteristic.

Letting Go

I went on a little adventure to a nearby city last weekend, taking the opportunity to listen to the old cassettes that haunt my glove box. The pick of the drive was Tina Turner's 1983 release, "Private Dancer" which won the Album of the Year award in 1985.

I noticed the cassette cover art was essentially a thumbnail of the vinyl album artwork pasted into the top two-thirds of the cassette. Despite the cassette being rectangular in shape, the graphic artist could not let go of the square form factor of the original album. Even today, with iTunes cover art, one sees the same artificial form factor. There is nothing particularly "square" about an mp3, and yet that is how iTunes cover art is displayed:



Stepping away from that artificial form factor proved fruitful for Stefan Sagmeister who won a grammy for the design of the Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime Boxed Set.

In fact, stepping away from the artificial structures is how a lot of effective research can be done in many subfields of computer science. Because software isn't bound by the rules of physics, or materials science, or practical cost--because one can do "anything" in software--computer scientists have to create their own artificial structures in order to make sense of things. There's no real reason that there are seven layers in the networking stack, somebody just made that up.

These are my approaches to research: to examine those artificial structures with a skeptical eye, to redesign them in the context of a specific domain, or to throw them out completely. I believe I'm good at this because I've always been good at letting go of material goods. I bought a new car. Hated it. Sold it. Bought a sensible used one in its place. I bought a house. I was accepted into graduate school in another state. Sold it. No big deal.

I was at the nursery on Friday looking for some perennials for my shade garden. I considered buying some annuals, but I caught myself thinking, "I'll get them next year when I sell the house." Already pushing myself to get out of here. Already getting reading to let go of the material goods that have accumulated in my stay in GradShitTownVille...

...and I still haven't prelim'ed yet.

Fuckers.

Scientiae Seven: How We Are Hungry

Growing up, it was the four food groups, swimming lessons, and playing outside.

My body at 30 has more complicated needs than when it was seven. Now it's alkaline body chemistry, weight-bearing exercises, calcium absorption, omega-3 fatty acids, iron-rich foods, target heart rate, LDL cholesterol levels, glycemic indices. And the food pyramid, though its look has changed a bit since I last saw it.



That thin slice of yellow? That's flan.

Pyramids have long been a way of expressing hierarchical relationships. There's the wellness pyramid, the $50,000 pyramid, the Maslow Hierarchy, the thin plot-lines of the Da Vinci Code, and wedding favors to keep those bridesmaids in their place. If the older generation computer scientists were more creative, the Networking Stack would have been a pyramid.

So it is with a pyramid that I express the hierarchical needs of our scientiae bloggers: how we are hungry.


* * *




Maslow had it right. At the bottom of our pyramid are the necessities. (Rosa's Organic) food, sex, bathroom breaks. And sleep. Jane of See Jane Compute can certainly attest to the importance of sleep these days. Beautiful and Brave Baby Jane is keeping her up as newborns do, but Dr. Jane and Mr. Jane appear to be adjusting well. But Maslow forgot tea. As fundamental as a good number two, Jenny F. Scientist reminds us that a hot cup of tea is what lures her out of bed.

When basic needs are met, we hunger for more, for jobs that pay money. And at those jobs, we want to teach ourselves to work effectively. Kate is inching closer to a system in which she balances her four projects, and even leaves space for the mysterious "Sun Fun Time."

Between eating, sleeping, and working, we hunger for leisure time. Skookumchick details her reading wish list and Lab Cat laments the lame characters in "Size 12 is Not Fat." Zuska's leisure is the outdoor kind, and she points out using her garden of irises that the women's march towards contributing equally in science has not been a steady one. Rather, it's been like a game of Sorry; it starts and stops and sometimes has to begin all over again.

Still, to return from a leisurely lunch hour with a full tummy, a book tucked under the arm with a fistful of flowers, we are still left with an ache. Where are the engaged co-workers, the professional friendships? Where are the lively discussions about Kalman Filtering? Where are the collaborators who bring out our best work? Kat on a Wire describes her emotional isolation at work.

Most of all, though, our bellies growl angrily for recognition. Emma highlights her heroines demonstrating her hunger to see other women receive their deserved recognition. To recognize all people as potential contributors to science, Twice tenured discusses the delicate matter of single-sex events as she hungers for equality. Addy and Elli want to be recognized simply as REAL SCIENTISTS instead of graduate students, or secretaries, or "scientists-in-training."
But recognition is not just Turing Awards and social change. It can be a simple act, like Astrodyke's proud display of merit badges

At the very top of our pyramid? Good public relations and a functional and funky bag.

Fallout

Spring 2007 is finally over in fcsgs-stan. In an effort to make my publication list "worthy," I submitted three papers this semester, with numbers 2 and 3 submitted last week. One might call that an academic death march.

After three days of movies, sleep, and retail therapy, I arise from the ashes to resume my workaholism. Here are the highlights from the three-day fallout:

• Took the package to the post office I'd been meaning to send for a month. It was a return on the bras I'd bought online. Both were the exact same size from the exact same company of the exact same bras I'm already wearing. One was too small. One was too big.



• Paid my bills.



• Watched "Waitress," "Pirates of the Carribean 3", and the first sixteen episodes of "Heroes." Ratings: Good, Confusing, Addictive.



• Spent the "Linens & Crap" gift card I got for my birthday (yeah, last year). Thanks to Moira for a new mesh strainer!



• Went to the vet to refill the dog's prescriptions.



• Went to a bar with the boyfriend's friends. The duchess and I kept each other company while the boys talked about oral sex and unification.



• Went to the bank.



• Lost three "stress pounds" in 4 days.



• Bought a fantastic pair of pants that met 3 of my 4 pant requirements: i) drape nicely on my bottom; ii) comfortable; iii) funky.



• Bought Miranda July's newest book with the Borders gift card I received last January for participating in a study. I don't normally buy books, but I really like this gal!



• Planned two parties. One going-away. One birthday.

I just did a quick calculation. Between walking the dog and riding my bike, I've burned more calories today than I've consumed. Hm. I think I'll have a latte!

How We Are Hungry

I've been an off-and-on contributor to the Scientiae carnival of female bloggers in the STEM fields. I'm the host for June 1st, and I thought I'd take a moment to mention the theme:

"How We Are Hungry."

Interpret it as you like. I'm looking forward to the posts. While you are thinking about ideas for posts, check out the #6 Scientiae Carnival.

And if you are looking for some good fiction, check out David Eggers book of short stories of the same name.

scientiae-carnival

Dish Licker, Not Washer

I Can Leave My Attic Now

I have a photo of a group of friends, 12 minutes before a big final exam in December of my first semester in graduate school. There are 16 people in the picture, 11 of whom are no longer here. Only three left with their intended degree. The rest are "drop-outs."

Drop-out? Isn't that the kid who dropped out of high school, is living at home and working at Payless Shoe Source to pay his cell-phone bill? No. These drop-outs are all living fabulous lives: enoying fun jobs in big cities, getting married, making large sums of money, and having babies. They are making what my friend K. calls "Life Progress."

I'm not a drop-out; I just finished my fifth year of graduate school. Yet, I'm the loser. I have $607.40 in my checking account. I'm an unmarried homeowner with a greying dog, an empty refrigerator, and unfinished knitting projects. My front lawn hasn't been mowed in two weeks. I haven't called my mother today.

Still, things are looking up. The boyfriend mowed the backyard just before he left for his summer internship. I have a paper draft for a paper deadline that just got postponed one week. If I squint hard enough, I can kind-of-sort-of see a small light at the end of this tunnel.

So says Annie Proulx in "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World."

The main thing in life was staying power. That was it: stand around long enough, you'd get to sit down.

No (thank you) flying car

With all the freakin' advances in technology, my needs are not met. I don't want a camera phone, an iPod, or anti-bacterial soap. All I want is an e-mail client that searches my sent mails for the word "attached." If there is no attachment, it should result in an error message, "You have the word 'attached' in your e-mail. Did you mean to send an attachment?"

This would save me months of embarassment.

Gadget-influenced Hypochondria

I've locked myself in the attic until I finish a draft of the paper. I'm allowed downstairs for iced tea refills and cereal.

The days have been hot, and I've kept the attic windows opened to cool the house. The carbon monoxide detector has sounded its alarm a few times. I wonder if the doofer-neighbor smoking next door on his porch is the source. Still, I have this dizzy-nauseous feeling; perhaps I'm being poisoned by my own house.

If I didn't have a CO detector, I probably wouldn't feel dizzy-nauseous at this moment. I have little choice, since CO detectors are mandated by GradShitTownVille. I can't disappoint the fire fighters that stop by my place annually for inspection.

This is just to say that I'm a dedicated graduate student today. Even the threat of CO poisoning won't prevent me from finishing this draft.

Somewhere Else

I envy the characters in Haruki Murakami's head. To them, it is everyday happenstance that their bodies melt into another place, that without much effort they can be somewhere else. They go, because they must, because it's what is done. "Don't look for me," they say; they return when they are ready.

Sadly, I am not one of these characters. My body is too physical; it is not gleamed from a page. When I crave other places, when I want to be left alone to do absolutely nothing, I've no magical realism at my disposal. I've only my little truck and miles of nighttime corn fields. My brain is given no demands. My autopilot drives the little truck, and there is nothing to see. It's the closest I have to sitting at the bottom of a well.

Tonight, not even the little truck will help me. A paper deadline is ominous, and every moment is spent thinking about it, or my pathetic CV, or my ever postponed prelim, or my right butt-cheek that's been strangely clenched for two weeks. Nothing is fun when there's a paper to be written.

Tomorrow, when I mow the lawn, I'll look more closely for an abandoned well.

Eavesdropping

Things overheard at a party I recently attended which confirmed that it had a high computer scientist attendance.

I just learned about algebraic multigrids. They're really cool.

We met in our formal verification class.

Don't look at me, I study fish ears.

It's useful, not like formal methods or anything.

No not that one. What's the name of that other guy who is dropping out of the PhD program?

So what's with Malaysia?

I think that some of the folks at this party are the target audience for this McSweeny's List about first dates.

How much further?

A cool article on "Inside Higher Ed" highlights Princeton's recent family leave policy for its graduate students.

A comment by "Science Prof" shows how so very much further we have to go.

The fact that women have a “biological clock” means nothing. The issue is still one of people making choices and accepting the consequences.

In my graduate program, I would much prefer to have grad students who have no children. They are willing to work harder and will not be whining about having to be home by 5 p.m. Graduate school is extremely demanding — my graduate program often requires an 80+ hour/week commitment. Grad students who have children are often unwilling to make that sort of a time commitment and they often fall behind or flunk out.

This is simply the nature of graduate school. Attempting to make it more “family friendly” will 1.) Reduce the academic standards of the program to accomodate students who cannot make the required time commitment and, 2.) Raise the costs on everyone else — especially students without children, who will likely end up paying more in tuition to subsidize those who do have children.

In 30 seconds, I thought of 11 faculty members at my university who could have written this.

Scientiae Carnival, A Logo

There's been a neat blog carnivale going on these past few weeks. It's called "Scientiae" and it features "Women in Science" blogs. They made a call for a logo, and I've got a first draft:



I didn't so much emphasize the "Science" part as I did the "Women Blogger" part. Given that it's a carnivale, and we are masked bloggers...Ok, I'll admit the result is a little cliche.

But I'm not playing!

Walking back from lunch, I tell the boyfriend the good news about my friend K.

"K. is defending on Monday."
He thinks about it, "Because the best offense is a good defense."
He thinks about it more, "And we know that CS majors are offensive."

* * *
I was a mean big sister. Was. In 1992, my brother puberty-ed up to 6 feet, and I became the nice big sister that I am today.

Back when I was a mean big sister, I played competitive games without my brother's knowledge. We'd be walking to the car, and I would quietly walk a little bit faster, knowing I'd reach the car (store, house, tree) first. "I WIN!" I would declare. He'd cry, "But I'm not playiiiinggg!!" And I would laugh in my mean big sister way. Horrible. I realize that I deserve the bad things that happen to me.

*
The University of GradShitTownVille is exacting my brother's revenge. They are playing a competitive game against me. Unlike my brother, I know they are playing. Thing is, I just don't want to play. There's a variety of names for this game,

Publish! Get the biggest pile of publications and work at a Top 10 school!
Buzz! Lie to your colleagues about your accomplishments, and make people think you are better than you are!
Plagarize! Steal from old publications and put them in your own!
Intellectual Starvation! Need things other than CS Research to make you happy? Forget about it! You need to focus to get that Top 10 job!!

[ages 22 and up]


Because I'm not playing, people often tell me, "You are losing. You aren't good at this game. You aren't going to win if you keep this up."

Well, that's not exactly what they say. Their messages sound more like, "You don't have enough publications to get a good job. You aren't going to get a good academic job with this publication record. You can't prelim with this few publications."

And yet, I get all these recruiter e-mails. Google. Lockheed Martin. Wind River (which is a funny one, since they laid me off in 2002). They tell me they are interested in me. They tell me that my skills are a good match. They say nice things about me. I feel like that 13 year old girl with low self-esteem sought out by the 26 year old man. Perhaps you know her. She makes public phone calls to Dr. Drew Pinskey.

Working at a radio station late at night ensures conversations with drunk callers

The phone rings. My co-host answers it, "Request? Let me give you to someone else, she knows the music better."

He hands me the phone. I greet the caller with, "WXYZ, 103.2, how can I help you?"
"Yeah, you guyssh take requests?"

I glare at my co-host. He's handed the drunk call over to me. Fine. Let's have some fun.

I reply, "Sure, we might not have it, but we'll do our best."
"Okay. How about Distant Early Warning by Rush."
"Sure." I have no intention of playing this.
"What are you doing down there tonight, baby? You guyssh partying?"
I winced at the b-word. "Nah, not really. Just playing music."
"You like it around here?"
"No. I hate it."
"What?"
"I hate it."
"What?"
"I hate it. Hate. H-A-I-G-H-T."
"Oh you aren't from around here?"
"No. I'm from the west coast."
"Ah, California, that's nice."
"Nope, not California."
"Huh? Uh. Washington?"
"Nope, one more try."
"Ontario?"
"Yep."
"Ah yeah, that'sh nice...you here for school?"
"Yeah, I'm going to the Cosmetology college on main street."
"Yeah?!"
"Yeah, I want to do make-up for the American Idol show."
"What?"
"American idol."
"What? Oh. What about hair? You do hair?"
"Nah, just make-up. You gotta specialize these days."
"Ah, that'sssh pretty cool..."