Ragemaster

Yesterday, as I went to the laundry room to put my clothes in the dryer, I went down a small staircase.  Since I still have issues going down stairs, I made a conscious effort to descend properly and use my left leg.  When I got to the bottom I continued towards the laundry room, I noticed something felt weird in my leg.  I looked down as I walked and noticed that with each step that it was bending the way it was supposed to.  Bam -- just like that I went from limping everywhere to walking normally.  It was completely involuntary.  Before the staircase I was still walking straight-legged and afterwards I was normal.

Since then I've been almost completely normal walking everywhere.  A few times when I start walking I notice that I'm goosestepping again, but now I know what it feels like to walk normally so I quickly change my gait.

I have a feeling that this process is similar to what Dilbert creator Scott Adams went through with his vocal disorder.  Though I would argue losing your voice in certain situations would be much worse than limping, the "remapping" of an area of your brain happened more or less involuntarily.  Adams figured out he could get his voice back by rhyming and once he knew what it felt like to talk normally, he could speak much more easily.  Now that I know what it feels like to bend my knee when walking, I can do it on a whim instead of trying to force it and look even weirder than with the limp.

As with EmNets over the summer, the trip to SenSys this week was an experience.

The sessions went from Wednesday through Friday so my adviser, the other student in our group, and I left Tuesday afternoon and got back late last night.  The weather in Williamsburg sucked when I left and it sucked when I got back, but it was nice in Raleigh.  I also managed to get in my weight routine and the bike/elliptical every day while I was there, but I had to get up early to do it.  The whole thing really wore me out and I was asleep by ten every night.  Of course, I got up before seven to start my routine and kept awake with the terrible coffee they had.  Hard to believe I drink enough coffee now to have preferences (darker roasts are better).

Overall, the whole thing was kind of weird.  Nearly everyone there was foreign -- despite most schools being from the U.S., almost all the students and professors were not.  I guess this was to be expected -- it was like taking a 200 person sample of the world population and putting them in the same room.  A plurality were Chinese, a lot were Indian, and there were only a small number of Europeans and Americans.  Since my adviser and the other guy in the research group were Chinese, I found myself hanging out with everyone else speaking in Chinese.  The group meals we had and conversations during the break were kind of awkward since they would speak some in English and then just suddenly switch to Chinese.  For example, the first night we went out (to a Chinese restaurant of course), I was the only one of eight that used a fork and knife.  I should probably start learning Chinese so that I can at least pick up some of it.  My adviser encouraged me to talk to people during the session breaks, but it's tough when many aren't speaking a language you can understand.

Asides from the demographics, the other thing that made it weird was the atmosphere.  These are some of the top people in sensor networks and the whole thing seemed so ... unprofessional.  The attitude of everyone and atmosphere seemed so relaxed and informal - at the end of a few presentations there were a few arguments between the presenters and a questioner.  Nearly everyone was in typical student-type clothes and the faculty were typically attired, and it seemed as much a chance to have a good time as it was to show off your work.  Some of the UVA guys came in one morning musing about how drunk they got the night before.  The closest thing I can compare this to is NCAAs for cross country.  With this conference and the NCAA meet, the idea is the same: the best schools come to show off their stuff, but the atmosphere at NCAAs was extremely professional and focused.  In both cases we had a banquet with everyone that was attending, but at NCAAs everyone was subdued, had their "game face" on, and kept conversation to those within their team.  In contrast, at SenSys, there was wine on the table and everyone was nearly out of control by the end.  Somehow, I expected something a little more formal, but I guess that's the appeal of academia -- you're given a fair amount of leeway as to what you can do in research and in your approach to your work.

I met up with the other people I had collaborated with over weekly Skype meetings since last winter.  It was interesting to meet them in person and I got some special hardware from the hardware guy we are working with for our current project.

In my opinion, about a third of the sessions were interesting, a third was okay, and another third wasn't of interest to me.  There was some cool stuff on measuring radio link connectivity burstiness, vehicle sensor networks, and integrating posture detection and geolocation data into social network sites.  There was stuff on distributed camera image recognition (detection people's gestures), ensuring privacy when sharing personal sensor data, and a environmental monitoring system using accelerometers to measure flow rate in water pipes.  I didn't care too much for the radio MAC protocol stuff and there were a few high-level programming frameworks that seemed uninteresting. 

According to my adviser, SenSys papers are focused on actual deployments and implementations while marginalizing theory in design.  Most of the papers had a giant deployment section with lots of pictures and evaluation statistics.  While deployments are practical, advancements are slow since so little new theory is developed.  One or two of the papers presented had simple data collection and evaluation schemes that were just tested extensively in the real world, such as a road pothole detection system using accelerometers and GPS/cell towers for localization.  I would like to work on stuff that can actually be deployed (I am now), but deployment and testing takes a lot of time and isn't really research.  Other conferences are more focused on theory and a simulation-based evaluation is acceptable.  The reviewers look more at algorithm design and novel theoretical ideas over real-world deployments and testing.  Additionally, the committees for each conference tend to have varying amounts of control over who gets accepted -- some are very tightly knit and seem to accept papers only from certain schools while others are more diverse and objective over their selections.

Listening to the paper presentations and going to the poster and demo sessions got me a few new ideas.  The poster and demo sessions were especially interesting because you could talk one-on-one with each person about what they had done or were working on.  A lot of people out there have a lot of good ideas.  Most of the presentations were done by students and a lot of them weren't much different than me in terms of age and experience.  It seems that students are typically listed as first authors and give the paper presentations while their advisers come to watch and ask all the hard questions.  That was also what was weird about it -- it wasn't much different than going to class and listening to student presentations, except that the work was exceptional.  I took a lot of notes and saw what made a good presentation: abstracting away details and making your main ideas clear.  It sounds like going to a conference (maybe not this one) and giving a talk on my paper is in my future.  I only have to get accepted first.

So now I come back motivated to get going on my current project.  The ideas are (hopefully) new and will actually work when we get the thing implemented.  I'll be able to do an actual test with sensors instead of just simulation.  The deadlines are looming and it's time to get moving.

It used to be that I would sacrifice hours of sleep in high school to play computer games every night.  Many nights I would stay up past 11 playing Counter-Strike or the latest Command and Conquer.  I could stay on the computer forever and then be a zombie in class the next day, nodding off as early as 9 or 10 in the morning.  During the summers, it would be the same thing: suffer through a run in the late morning heat and then play games the rest of the day.  I don't think my mom cared for that, doing nothing most of the day, and was probably relieved when I started working after my junior year.

Those days are over and I don't think they are coming back.  Something happened when I started college that has really changed my interests in nearly everything.  I'm not sure what it was or exactly how it happened, but it seems to have been a slow, gradual process that probably completed its transformation by the time I finished undergrad.  I'm different now and I wish I knew why.

I want to play video games, but I just can't get into it.  I've started playing stuff occasionally, such as the latest episodes of Half-Life 2 and Portal.  Those I finished because of their brevity, but longer stuff, like Call of Duty 4 and some recent RTS games I just started on, got stuck in one place and then just said: "screw it".  None of them are nearly as exciting as they would have been eight or ten years ago.  The most recent stuff that's out there now would have been mind-blowing to me back then: the latest GTA, Fallout 3, and possibly Spore.  I would have spent most of my life playing them, but not anymore.

It appears as though I'm not the only one that this has happened to.  Some of the research says it's to do with social networking; that everyone would rather play games with people they know rather than against unknown opponents online or a computer in single player.  I do notice a correlation between the time I spend on sites like Digg and Facebook and the decrease in time I spent playing games.  However, I still notice tons of people about my age and older that still play a fair amount: the assistants at PT talk occasionally about meeting up after work to play Halo, the physical therapist (in his 40s) even says he plays Madden on the weekends, my roomate plays plenty of PC games, and even my dad finished Crysis when I just dropped it after the zero-grav part.

In some ways, programming replaced the satisfaction I got from playing video games.  It's better because I have complete control over the environment.  In video games, you are forced to live in the environment the developers create and play by their rules.  It's like the first Matrix movie: why play by the rules when you can bend them or even create your own?  Why should I be restricted to use a shotgun to solve the problem of a developer-imagined monster when I can solve much more interesting problems of my own creation with tools of my own creation?  Yesterday, I spent all day thinking about a job-scheduling type scenario for wireless sensor networks.  Last night, I finally figured out a solution.  While the problem wasn't entirely my doing, coming up with the solution was much more in-depth and satisfying than blasting the crap out of a few enemy soldiers with a C-130 in CoD 4.  And, my solution may not be the best.  My adviser or the other guys in our group may come back with some constructive criticism to help with a better answer.

Again, I would really like to get back into gaming.  Doing work can be satsifying, but it is also draining and it would be great to have some kind of release since I can't run.  Some of the stuff that's out there right now sounds like it could be fun, but I don't even know if my PC can handle it.  Possibly, I'd have to upgrade the video card at the least, and of course that's a slippery slope to just upgrade the whole desktop that's been rusting under my desk.  It's too loud when it's on and generates a ton of heat, so there's a massive incentive to figure out how to make the whole thing quieter.  Furthermore, I've only got one monitor that I use with my laptop, so I'd have to unplug it, the keyboard, and the headphones and put them all into the PC whenever I want to play anything.  There's also the cost issue: right now I've got to save since my surgery/rehab is expensive.

Maybe I'll try once again to get back into gaming, and maybe I won't.  Maybe there will be another sea change that will shift my attitude and fun factor when I play, but I'm not so sure.

Yesterday marked over two months since the surgery.  I've come a long way, but there's a long way to go too.  I'm now allowed to bike and elliptical on my own, so I took advantage of that today and went to the school rec center: 15 minutes on the bike, and ten on the elliptical.  This I did in addition to my usual morning weight routine which takes nearly 45 minutes.  It would be great to bike outside, especially since the weather is nice today, but I don't think I'm ready for that and won't be for awhile.  My leg still shakes with weakness after 15 minutes.  Also, it seems that my good knee has been hurting and popping some, which must be some kind of compensation problem.  I'm hoping it's nothing serious and just a mild consequence of putting most of my weight on the good knee, since the pain started when I was on the crutches.

Last night one of my old teammates who goes to dental school in Richmond came down to see the team massage therapist.  I dropped by while he was there since I hadn't seen him since the summer.  The massage guy, who punished and tortured me for so many years, had an interesting comment about leg strength that I hadn't heard before: your quads should be 20 percent stronger than your hamstrings.  That is, if you are on a leg press that works your quads, you should use 100 pounds if you are using 80 pounds on a leg curl machine for your hamstrings.  No wonder runners have so much trouble with knees: quads get very little action compared to hamstrings and calves.  Biking can change that, though.

My teammate's got knee issues like I do and has been out ever since dominating the Boston marathon last spring.  He really hasn't been able to run since then and an MRI indicated grade 1 or 2 damage to the articular cartilage.  That's where the cartilage is bruised or has a small divot in it, but not like my grade 4 where it's chipped out all the way to the bone.  He seems so motivated to run again and get back into regular training, but with permanent damage like that, it may not be possible.  Since his damage wasn't as severe as mine, the docs say surgery wouldn't accomplish anything, which leaves him out in the cold if the pain persists.  Hopefully most of the pain is caused by some inflammation from whatever he did and once that subsides he'll be able to run again, but if I were him I would change my mindset.  Right now, I would consider my recovery a success if I am able to run 20 -30 miles a week.  It's so bad because he was running so well and even got some sponsorship offers.  Maybe it's not as bad and he'll be out there kicking butt again soon.

It begs an interesting philosophical question: would you like to run the race of your life knowing that you would never be able to run again?  You would sacrifice everything to blow the field out of the water.  Your time and place would be so much better than you ever hoped it would be, but when you finished, you would never be able to start again.  Would that be worth it instead of having a lifetime career of running but only making modest personal gains?  I don't know for sure, but I do like running just to be outside and to feel like I accomplished something.

I'm finally making some headway on the latest school project.  It should be an interesting experiment since we will get to wear some sensors for awhile to test our model.  Since we are going to use human test subjects, my advisor blindly checked off some box about it when sending in the research proposal to the school.  Now they are making us fill out all this liability stuff and explain our exact test procedure when we aren't really finalized on everything.  And, we, the researchers working on the project, are the only ones who are going to be the subjects, so I think we are completely aware of any "dangers" that go along with wearing some sensors.

Lastly, I got home to vote absentee at the city municipal center when I was on fall break.  I got that taken care of since I'll be at SenSys on election day.  Really, I don't think either presidential candidate matches my choices.  Obama's tax plan raises marginal tax rates for those who make under $45k per year (poor grad student). McCain plans to freeze all research spending for a year after he enters office.  Obama hasn't even finished a full term in the Senate; McCain is going to be 80 if he gets elected for two terms.

Both have the wrong idea on the economy.  The problem goes beyond government regulation or lack of it.  It starts with individuals.  A lot of people today are lazy and want everything for nothing. They want the car and house they can't afford, so they go into credit card debt and default on their mortgage.  They want the college that puts them $40k in the hole only to graduate and bus tables.  They want health care and retirement benefits without lifting a finger.  These people purchase what they can't afford and then expect everyone else to pay for it when the repo man comes knocking.  It's a sense of entitlement and it drives me mad.  Here's a hint to fix this mess: stop buying stuff that you can't afford or shouldn't be, get off your ass, and start contributing to society.  The same mindset of the CEOs with enormous golden parachutes and corrupt politicians taking enormous sums from lobbyists is present in everyone.  If this persists, we'll be in a barter economy real soon.  The problem is that the candidates and government can't blame the constituents without taking heat for it and risking their own jobs and re-election.  The solution starts from the bottom up, with you and me, not from the top down (government).

Yeah, that's progress.

This week at the physical therapist was good from a flexibility standpoint.  I can now sit on the edge of a table and let my leg hang down without any tightness.  I couldn't do that at the start of this week.  Because I can now bend my knee to 90 degrees -- and move the brace that much, I can now get my left shoe on without using a giant shoehorn.

I've progressed to using one crutch for a lot of my getting around, but when I go longer distances, I still stick to two.  My knee feels a lot more stable than it did and it seems to tolerate the weight bearing more without getting sore.  Slowly, I will try to walk farther with only one crutch and I am already going short distances without anything at all, but I feel kind of like I'm on stilts.

Yesterday, the weather started taking a crap and it's been terrible outside.  While I was headed to and from the office in the miserable mess, at least five people asked me if I needed a ride or help getting around.  I did have to go farther than normal to get to my parking space since it seemed everyone drove.  Nobody ever said anything to me before.  Maybe that says something good about human nature when stuff gets tough. 

I need to go to the grocery store but I don't feel confident enough to go by myself since I can't really carry much with only one crutch.  When I do, it throws off my balance.  The Trader Joe's is open that rose out of one of the new vast swaths of clearcut woods.  I thought about going in there after my appointment today, but it was a complete mob scene, since today was the first day it was open.  I figured it would be bad when everyone at the physical therapist was talking about it.  People were almost parking along the highway to get in there.  I'll go back after some of the hype dies down and when I'll be able to get around better on my own.

They finally gave me my diploma today and for the longest time I thought I hadn't done something that I was supposed to in order to graduate.  I was supposed to get it in August.  Finally, this morning I got an email and I went over to the registrar and picked it up.  No real ceremony this time.  It looks just like my other one except that the president has changed and it reads "Scientae Magistrum".  They didn't give me a cover for it either, so I've got to get something to protect it.

Next week I'll get to ride the bike.  Of course, the therapist's idea of riding the bike is probably a lot different than mine at this point.  It will still be good to start back, though, even if it's just ten minutes of slowly turning my legs around.

I noticed today when I had the brace off that my left calf is down to almost nothing. It's going to be rough coming back. I'm not getting as much popping in the left knee as I was a few weeks ago, which makes me think that something has started to fill in the hole of missing cartilage.

Everyone else seems to be out doing stuff with their perfectly fine knees. My mom ran in the half marathon at the beach last weekend, my sister runs regularly and is playing in a rugby game next weekend. A few of the guys who were close to my year have continued to run and do some races -- one guy I know posted pictures from a nasty 18 mile mountain pass run in Colorado. My roommate back at school has started to run again after a year off and is out exploring the area every day. I did hear that one of my old teammates who ran a solid marathon in the spring is still out with patella tendon issues, so I'm not alone.

I was up at school one day last week to see my adviser and I also stopped to talk with my old coach. It was great to talk to everyone, but I still wasn't comfortable with being back at school. When I came back home, I was exhausted. Once I can walk again, things will be so much easier. At school, I had to plan how to get around without running into staircases or steep hills. All the doors to the buildings weigh ten tons and are almost impossible to open when on crutches. They also have those worthless anti-slam things on them that cause the door to close on you as soon as you try to go through it. Having the disabled parking placard helps a lot because otherwise, I'd be crutching for several miles to get to the office and to the hall when I went to see my coach. That said, here at home I still make an effort to get out each day and go around the block, which takes 15 - 20 minutes. It's getting easier, but it still isn't fun.

I'm starting on a new school project so work consists of looking for state-of-the-art papers. I don't particularly enjoy reading research papers, but otherwise I'll neither have many ideas for research nor will I know if the work or problems I am interested in has already been solved. I'm now officially a Ph.D. candidate so I won't have to worry about taking any more classes. From here on out, it's going to be research, which is exciting. Of course, success has a new meaning: it's no longer the grades you get, but whether or not your work gets published. This is going to be hard. Of course, it's still possible that I can graduate without publishing anything, but an employer would really think twice before hiring me if my research wasn't that great. I could also start a business of my own, but that would probably mean that my work was sufficiently good (and published) that it would be worth selling.

There were a few unresolved issues with the paper we just submitted for review, but no matter how it turns out, it will be a good learning experience. The past six months or so have been a complete paradigm shift and there were so many new things that I picked up on that it will be a valuable lesson for what to do in the future.

Overall, a lot of things have happened that are different from "normal". Not all of them are good (like the whole knee deal), but I can learn from everything.

This brace is extremely annoying and it would be great to just take it off and run free...

Instead, I'm stuck with it on and can't move my leg more than 30 degrees. At my appointment, they removed the stitches, which surprisingly didn't hurt at all. The emphasis was that I'm to remain partial weight bearing at least until my next appointment three weeks from now. I'm sure after that I'll probably still have to wear the brace, but they might give me more range of motion. I might be able to start some kind of PT program then too.

Because of the brace, I still can't bike, even with no resistance. The doctor said if I have a Nordic Trac or some kind of flat elliptical that I might be able to do that real easy, but I'll have to wear the brace to prevent more than 30 degrees of movement in my knee. The pool would be best, but I couldn't wear the brace in there and nor could I guarantee that I wouldn't bend my leg too much. It seems I'll be stuck with my leg lifts, crunches, and free weight routine.

The real issue is just getting around. It's so frustrating to shower or to put my shoes on and I can't really carry anything. Everything just takes a lot more time and patience.

I'm just going to have to continue to hang tough for awhile. It drives me insane whenever I see someone running or biking and there were plenty doing it today at school. Of course, I think about how good their knees probably feel and that they don't have any cartilage missing.

I've now been stuck in this brace and on crutches for over a week. So far it hasn't been too bad, but it's real difficult to do a lot of things that I took for granted before. I'm not sure how I'll be able to get along at school by myself -- I can't carry anything but a backpack and it's a real chore to shower and to get food by myself. I'm hoping that I'll become more adjusted to this and be faster -- it takes me an hour to get ready in the morning compared to about 15 minutes before. I'll see how things go on my own on Thursday and into Friday when I have to go back to have the stitches removed. Driving is going to be interesting and hopefully I'll be able to get my leg in the car with the minimal amount of movement the brace allows.

I started a weight routine for my legs and upper body which is the best I can do since I can't run or bike. It should help some when I eventually am allowed more range of motion in the brace. The brace has done wonders for my hamstring flexibility though. I have been putting some weight on the left leg since the doctor and PA said I am allowed to, but I stick to the crutches when I move around. I'm real paranoid about screwing up the healing process and knocking out that clot in the knee that's supposed to form new cartilage. There's still a few times each day where I'll move and I can feel the knee pop right in the area where I had the microfracture. I really hope that's not the kneecap destroying part of the clot that's in there. I'll have to ask about that on Thursday.

There really isn't much else I can do except work on the school project during the day and watch the Olympics at night. The stuff I'm working on still has problems and the conference submission deadline is at the end of the week. Each test case in the experiment takes about 5 hours of CPU time so each time I change something it takes quite awhile until I see results. And there are a lot of test cases, so I need as many as 20 or 30 processors running simultaneously to get results as fast as possible. I used to wonder why there was a need for systems with so many processors, but now I know. Each group of tests also spits out about a gig in raw data which also illustrates the need for a large amount of storage space.

I really hadn't watched that much of the Olympics before whenever they had it, but I don't really have that much else to do this time around. I always watched some of the track stuff, but that was about it. Personally, I didn't think the coverage was all that great since there seemed to be an insane amount of commercials. Also, since there were so many sports, they couldn't show everything, so the time was broken into small chunks of each. I didn't get to see some of the stuff that sounded interesting, like the sailing or whitewater rafting stuff, shooting, or the modern pentathlon (which has cross country). There were a lot of things that I didn't find as interesting, like diving and gymnastics, which seemed to last forever and require a palate akin to a professional wine taster in order to distinguish between a good and bad performance.

With the entire world watching, you would think that all the athletes would be on their best behavior as a representative of their country and as the best in their sport. Despite this, there seemed to be a bit of showboating and poor sportsmanship. One guy in taekwondo kicked a referee in the face after being disqualified. A wrestler threw his medal down on the mat after being angry over a judge's call. In the qualifying heats of the 4 x 400, Great Britain's anchor taunted the Jamaican runner behind him as they finished. And of course, there was all the showing off for the camera by Jamaica's Bolt in the 100 and 200 -- this was so bad there is even a YouTube video mocking it. There were many cases in the qualifying heats of the sprints where those in the front would pretty much slow down and walk across the finish line. Before the championship season every year in track, our head coach always said if we did that we'd never be wearing a uniform again. Of course, these instances were probably the exceptions rather than the rule, but it only takes a few bad apples.

Now that the Olympics are over it's now on to the hype of the conventions and the fall election. I'm getting sick of a lot of it especially since Virginia is considered a "swing" state. There are tons of ads on TV, most of which are really annoying. There are too many attacks on the other guy and not enough emphasis on the good qualities of either candidate.

Maybe by the time all that is over I'll be back on my feet again and things will be more or less back to normal. Maybe I'll be crippled for life, but I'm trying to do everything I can to avoid that.

Everything seems to merge together now that I can't bike or run or really do anything. Usually, every day is defined by the running or biking that I did. Now I don't have that and it could be awhile before I'm permitted to start again.

Yesterday I went up to the orthopedist for the first visit since the surgery. The PA took the brace off and the bandages for the first time since the surgery. My knee was and still is about the size of a softball with three small incisions. After leaving to converse with the orthopedist, the PA readjusted the brace to allow for 30 degrees of motion and also said I could start putting weight on it. Weight bearing almost immediately after microfracture surgery seems to go against every other case I've heard of because it may damage or impair the formation of new cartilage. The orthopedist said it was because of the location of the injury that I can put weight on it almost immediately, but it still has me worried. The pioneers of microfracture seem to agree with the orthopedist's assessment since the images indicate that the problem was in or near the trochlear groove.

Now that the brace has been adjusted some, it is easier to move around some as well as sleep at night with the brace on. It also makes a world of difference just to be able to shower. It's a major pain to get the brace on and off since I need help. I've started doing leg lifts and some calf raises that the PA recommended that I start on and I'm sure once the brace is loosened or comes off I'll have to see a PT. I added some upper body stuff with free weights as well since I can't really do anything else. No matter what, it's going to be a major uphill battle whenever it is that I'm allowed to return to biking or running. I remember going out on a ride with one of my teammates when I had something that was preventing me from running, but my teammate had been unable to do anything for months and was finally allowed to bike again. I went pretty easy, but dropped him within the first 20 minutes anyway. That's going to be me.

The pain is pretty much gone, but sometimes there is some throbbing. It isn't any worse than it was before the surgery, which is good. I've heard that a lot of people that get microfracture are in more pain following the surgery than before and it takes several months before it feels better. Again, this is probably due to where my injury is. It must be that most people get cartilage tears in the lower and outside parts of the femur compared to me, which is higher up and more towards the middle where the kneecap goes. I have felt a click a few times when bending the knee and it's right where I've had trouble. I'm not sure if this is okay or not, but it doesn't hurt or seem as violent like before the surgery when it would happen. I guess I'll find out in due time if everything heals correctly. As I've said before, I don't want to screw this up and have to get a second surgery or be unable to bike or run.

At this point I don't know if I'll be able to function at school by myself since opening doors, showering, and even driving may be difficult. I can drive, but it's a matter of getting the leg into the car since I can't bend it much. I've got another appointment next week to remove the stitches and I'll probably stay at school at least one night then. I really don't want to be a burden on my roommate but I can tell my parents don't care for it either. I would really like to try to gain more independence.

After the appointment, my mom and I went by the DMV to get one of those disabled placards for the car so I wouldn't have to walk/crutch very far from the car to the office. Otherwise, not only would I have to go a long distance, but I'd also have to face a couple staircases. I nearly fell on one when we went over to the computer science office.

I spoke with my adviser to let him know I was still alive and that I can work from home, which I'm doing now. I also got some stuff for my candidacy application taken care of, but it's not finished. Maybe by next week, I'll be a Ph.D. candidate officially.

The deadline for our project is within a week or so and it's having problems, but I'm doing the best I can to get it finished. Since this is my first conference paper it will be a good learning experience no matter what. I can build on my mistakes and do something better next time. I'll have plenty of time to make improvements.

I am now one day closer to running again without pain. After a month of having the surgery looming, I finally had it and no longer have to worry about it.

Honestly, it was an interesting experience, excluding the fact that I can't do anything for quite awhile and am in a bit of pain. There weren't many people in the hospital while I was there, but I still had to do a lot of waiting. The building was really nice as was the room that they put me in. In the new hospital in Williamsburg, all the rooms are private, which I guess is unheard of.

After I checked in, I sat in a waiting room with my parents and then we were called in to a private room, in which I changed into a gown and waited some more. It was about two hours before anything really happened. Sometime after 9, a nurse came in and followed up on a bunch of medical history questions that I had been asked on Friday. She hooked me up to an IV of electrolytes and then I just watched more TV for nearly an hour. The anesthesiologist came in and talked to me for a minute or so, confirming that they were doing microfracture on my left knee and then quickly explained how the anesthetic would be applied. The surgeon came in right after that and again quickly talked to my parents and me about the knee operation. He also took a marker and wrote "Yes" on my left knee. Then it was time.

All the waiting was really making me nervous, so it seemed even worse when a few more hospital staff came into the room with the anesthesiologist to wheel me into the operating room. I realized that I had already taken my last steps, for they wouldn't let me walk in there on my own. Just as they pushed me out into the hall, the anesthesiologist took a needle of something and shoved it into the IV tube. The staff, along with the anesthesiologist, wheeled me down a long maze of halls until we got into the operating room. They asked me if I was feeling drowsy, but I thought I felt fine. In the operating room, they wheeled the stretcher I was on next to the operating room table and asked me to crawl onto the table. In doing this I realized was feeling a bit tired.

I really don't remember much about the operating room except that it was big and it was really bright. A few of the staff started talking to me, but I can't remember what we were saying. I think it was about school. Then, they put a mask on me and we kept conversing, but again, I can't remember what was said. I don't remember feeling very tired or anything either.

The next thing I knew was that I was in the recovery room. There was a clock on the wall and it was about 11:30. I knew I left about 10 for the operating room, so I was surprised that it took as long as it did. Though there were at least five or six other beds in the room, there was nobody else in there except for a nurse. The nurse noticed I was awake and told me to close my eyes and go back to sleep. I didn't want to. I remember saying a few things to her, but I can't exactly remember what. I remember looking at the computer next to me which had an EKG readout and the nurse said something about my pulse being really low and that it kept setting off an alarm. I could hear it beeping. At some point the surgeon came by and said something about removing a one inch piece from my knee. I felt like I was in the recovery room for about five minutes before being wheeled back into the small room where my parents were, but when I got there and looked at the clock, it was 12:15. That made no sense to me, so I must have passed out again at some point.

The whole anesthetic experience was really weird since I've never had gaps in my memory like that. I've never lost track of time nor do I usually forget the topic of conversations that I've had in the recent past. It was like someone had hit the fast forward button on my memory.

Oddly, I didn't have any pain when I finally became completely coherent. A new nurse came into the room and told my parents and I everything was done and that the operation went well. The nurse, like the one in the recovery room, also said that my pulse was really low and that it kept setting off the alarm on the EKG. Looking at it, my pulse was in the 40 bpm range, but occasionally went over 50 and turned the alarm off. Then it would go down again and the alarm would start screaming, so she just turned the thing off.

Looking down, I noticed I was in a huge leg brace that covered my entire leg, from ankle to upper thigh. The nurse went over some quick instructions about what to do in the next few days, which included some foot exercises to prevent blood clots. She gave me a sheet with the orthopedist's appointment number for a follow up appointment that I am supposed to make. I've got to go back up to Williamsburg on Thursday for the follow-up and hopefully they will remove the bandages so that I can shower.

After that, I put on some clothes, got into a wheelchair and was taken out to the front where my dad pulled the car around.

I didn't get to talk to the orthopedist again before leaving, but he had a good conversation with my parents about what went on in the surgery and about what to expect in the short term. He gave them a bunch of pictures from inside my knee. He took out a 1-inch piece of cartilage that had been floating around in there. One of the pictures had it next to a ruler and it looked to be about 2.5cm x 1cm. That was a lot bigger than I expected and I've heard that microfracture has lower success rates for larger areas. There were some pictures of the microfracture area, which greatly contrasted from the smooth areas of undamaged cartilage. The tear was really jagged and rough. After looking at the pictures, I'm surprised I was not in more pain over the past several months.

The orthopedist told my parents that I should be able to move my leg to about 30 degrees without any rubbing of the microfracture area against the kneecap. When I go to the next appointment, in addition to removing the bandages, set the brace at more of an angle so I can move around better and hopefully drive. I'm not sure about any kind of range of motion stuff, like spinning on an exercise bike. It seems that others that have had this surgery are able to do range of motion exercises fairly soon (and that it's important to do so), but it seems different for me, maybe because of the location and size of the injury. I guess each doctor has a different approach. My parents said the orthopedist seemed very optimistic about my recovery and that the tear really wasn't that bad. It's kind of hard for me to form an opinion about that until I really start the recovery process.

Yesterday after I got back I just sat in front of the TV and watched the olympics. I convinced my parents to let me eat in the kitchen instead of just sitting on the couch. Getting up to go to the bathroom became a major chore, but I've moved around on the crutches a bit more now and it is starting to get easier. I had no pain whatsoever until about 8 last night and then whatever local anesthetic they gave me wore off like flipping a switch. Then it really started to hurt, a lot like it hurt when I last ran, except over a larger area. Taking the prescription painkillers only helped a little and they also made me dizzy.

It was also hard to sleep, which was a combination of the pain and the brace, which kept me from moving around much. At some point in the middle of the night, the pain subsided a fair amount and it's been a lot better ever since.

It's hard to just sit here while everyone else is out and about. My sister has been in and out several times since I've been here and my mom went out running. At this point it's difficult just getting a bowl of cereal. I'm glad I came home because I would be in trouble if I were at school by myself. I'm hoping that it will get easier within the next week or so in order for me to go back to school and go to the office. I really hope that I'll be allowed to do some kind of range of motion type stuff soon to help ease my conscience. The longer I can't move my knee the more paranoid I'm going to be about it when I finally get the chance to do so. Of course, all the while I'm going to get extremely out of shape which will make any kind of recovery all the more challenging. But, now that the surgery is behind me it's a lot easier to focus on the things I need to do to get better.

Today I did the 55+ mile Williamsburg road race course. I hadn't done the whole thing in a long time and it was a good way to spend the last day under my own power. It was a great day and the sun was out with very little wind. I should have topped off my water bottle since it was kind of hot. There were tons of other cyclists out, way more than I've ever seen out there -- I saw probably 30 or so the whole trip. All were going the other direction and most I saw early on, probably doing the same loop in reverse, except that they started a lot earlier to avoid the heat. I was pretty wiped by the end -- when I've done the loop before, I usually start to get tired about two hours in and today was no exception.

A lot of the roads farther out were really torn up and desperately needed repaving. It's funny there is a huge transportation stalemate in the state legislature because of road funding. The urban representatives are facing off against the rural ones since the urban areas want more funding to help ease gridlock. The rural roads definitely need some help. I guess it doesn't matter when you have a massive F-350 with 40 inch tires, but today I felt like I was being shaken apart in some places. The bike was skipping gears like mad and the water bottle cage was coming loose and rattling around. Anyhow, I made it back in about 3 hours, which wasn't a record by any shot, but I'm glad I did it. Towards the end I could feel the soreness building up in my knee. Hopefully I will be able to ride again without knee issues in a few months.

Tomorrow I go in at 7 AM to the hospital for the surgery as long as I don't get sick. You can't have any breathing problems for the anesthesia. On Friday, a nurse from the hospital called me and asked a ton of questions that were probably related to the anesthesia. Curious, I did some research on the Internet and now I wish I hadn't. It's about as close to lethal injection as you can get. In some cases, it is -- people die from it, but it seems it's mainly due to airway obstructions more than allergic reactions. They put an IV into your arm (I always thought they made you breathe in some kind of gas). Apparently for awhile after the IV fluids enter your system you are still fully conscious, but you will forget most of what happened after you wake up following the surgery. Then you go into some kind of convulsive state where you have all kinds of uncontrolled movements and then you finally pass out completely. After reading this, I'm wondering if they make you wear a diaper, just in case. Just like lethal injection, they put some kind of muscle relaxant in there to make it easier to operate on you. If reading about this part was freaky enough, it gets worse.

Apparently, less than one percent of general anesthesia patients experience some kind of "awareness" during the operation when they are supposed to be unconscious, and a large number of those report feeling pain. From the sounds of it, awareness during surgery, especially when accompanied by pain, can have a lasting affect on people, even driving them to suicide! Since there is a muscle relaxant in the drug cocktail, the patient can't tell anyone that they are awake and the surgery goes on, leaving them in pure pain and suffering. This is what they say about lethal injection, that the muscle relaxant keeps the patient from communicating that they are feeling any pain. Supposedly, there are recent methods to try to detect when a patient is awake, but it still happens. Hopefully I'll be okay, but this really makes me apprehensive about tomorrow. They had better let me get on a scale so that they give me enough drugs to keep me from waking up.

All that aside, then there's the recovery to deal with, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. In all likelihood, that will be much, much worse than the surgery.

Aside from that, I've got to try to finish up some stuff for school, but I don't know if I will since I've been kind of unnerved about this whole deal over the past couple days. Yesterday after I left the office, I ran into a few old teammates, who are now going to be seniors. I hadn't talked to any of them in awhile and it made me feel a little better. It sounds like everything is going well for them and our team is shaping up well for the fall Cross Country season. My coach said to stop in after the surgery to talk about the recovery, so I'll probably do that after a week or so, whenever I get back to Williamsburg. I'm going to need as much guidance as I can get for the recovery process and slowly returning to activity. I don't want to do too much too soon and screw up the healing process. I'm sure there will be good days and bad days, and most of the days in the next few weeks will be bad ones, but as I get better, the tide will begin to shift and things will get better. And then, like injuries I've had in the past, you wake up and realize that you're all better and that, once again, all is well with the world. Right now, all I can think is that if I don't go through this, it will be much worse for me down the road.

I feel like an astronaut strapped into a rocket about to be blasted into space. Hopefully I'll be able to say everything went well this time tomorrow.

And then I'll be incapacitated. I feel basically fine now, except that my knee has been popping a lot more than usual. It's still more annoying than anything, but I don't want to risk running on it either. I'm not looking forward to the next few months at all but it's something I have to go through if I want everything to eventually return to normal. I've stocked up on frozen food so I won't have to mess with trying to cook anything while I can't move around very well.

It turns out that one of my teammates did have microfracture surgery before and at the end of his 6+ month recovery, he was running and working out again with everyone else. It took a lot of work to get back into shape, but he did it and is still running without problems today. Tomorrow I am supposed to meet with the orthopedic surgeon to sign some paperwork and try to figure out what will happen in the days/weeks/months following the surgery.

My cell phone was slowly breaking down over the last few months and finally seemed to give up the ghost yesterday. Aside from the 10-15 minute battery life, it had gradually been unable to connect with the cell network. For awhile, it would randomly lose and reconnect with the network, but yesterday it was "No Service" everywhere I went while everyone else I saw was yakking it up. Normally I don't talk on the phone very much, but when I'm out on the bike or driving somewhere and something breaks down, it's good to have. I'll have to figure out what to do about this and I am not sure I want to plunk down more money for something that's intentionally designed to wear out after a few years. I really just want something that can make calls and has a long battery life; all that other crap like pictures, video, unwieldy web browsing, and text messaging I have no need for.

Yesterday my mom dropped by and we took the ferry to Surry and tried going to a barbecue place for dinner. Naturally, it was closed on Tuesdays. An hour of driving and the ferry trip and there wasn't much else out there, except for the Virginia Diner, so we went there instead. It wasn't bad, but not all that great either. I've seen that place while driving by on 460 several times, but never ate anything there. We've stopped a few times to buy some of the peanuts and peanut brittle they have, but never the food.

As we drove through Surry county, I saw lots of signs and bumper stickers reading "No OLF" in giant red letters, protesting one of the potential sites for the Navy outlying landing field for all the planes at Oceana and Cherry Point to practice landings. A much bigger protest has been going on in Northeastern NC for a lot longer since that was the Navy's first choice. My mom said she couldn't blame them for protesting it since a lot of people live out in the middle of nowhere to avoid stuff like that, but the funny thing is that is the same reason why the Navy wants to build there in the first place: there's nothing around. For over 20 years I've lived within 5 miles of Oceana and the jets flying around at all hours never really bothered me. In fact, I sleep way better at home than I ever do in Williamsburg, where it's usually quiet. Sometimes the quiet seems kind of unnerving because I almost expect there to be some kind of background noise of planes flying and cars driving down the nearby highways. It's probably why Williamsburg seems so tired to me. That said, I can't really fault the people in Surry for protesting either since they were there first and live there so they don't have to deal with the noise and irritations of living in the close quarters of a city. If I were one of them, I would feel the same way.

I have only a few more days to enjoy my freedom of movement, and then I'll be confined to crutches. I'm still biking as much as I can and walking everywhere I can too. Not being able to do much else will allow me to spend more time with school, but it's good to have a break. Following a few weeks of downtime, then the real challenge of recovery begins. It's always way harder to recover from an injury than it is to manifest one or take the initial time off after getting one. In the meantime, I'll try to enjoy what I've got.

I've had trouble with the area around my left knee for a few years, but for the most part it had been tolerable. But then, back in late January I was out running one freezing cold morning and my knee just blew up. I heard something snap as a shockwave of pain went through my knee. Since then, my running has been a mess. For a few weeks afterwards I was able to run okay, but with a lot of popping and cracking and irritation. Then I started compensating on the other leg and was out until the late spring because of my right IT band. Despite not running much for several months, the irritation in the left knee never went away. I felt it driving, climbing stairs, and sometimes walking around. I knew something bad had happened and it was only a matter of time before I had to do something about it. Since the IT band got better, I've been running more. That is, until two weeks ago when I began to feel really bad grinding pain in the joint. It was time to face the pain and deal with it.

After two visits to the orthopedist and an MRI, the doctor says I have torn a hole in my articular cartilage that surrounds the joint. The piece that tore out is now floating around above the knee joint, which explains the weird spasms and soreness I have at the end of the lower quad. The good thing (according to the doctor) is that the hole is kind of on the side of the joint, meaning that it doesn't bear much weight. If the hole were on the bottom, I wouldn't be able to walk. The doctor had me do a couple different movements with my leg and was surprised that they didn't cause me much pain. It seemed that the MRI indicated that I was much worse off than I felt. Going in there after the MRI, I was surprised to get such a definitive answer as to what was going on. It seems that most of my past injuries were always ambiguous, but of course they were never this bad.

So now I am scheduled for surgery at the end of August to remove the loose piece of cartilage and to stimulate growth of new cartilage via a process known as "microfracture". They poke holes in the bone where the hole is and cause bleeding and a clot to form. Over time, the area is supposed to form new cartilage. It won't be as good as the original cartilage, but it will be better than nothing and hopefully stop the metal-on-metal grinding that I've had when I last ran.

So now I have to face the prospect of not being able to run again for a very long time. Post-surgery I am supposed to be on crutches for a minimum of four weeks, but I have heard it can take longer before you can walk again. The healing process takes months so it may be that long before I can try running, but the doctor seems to think that I will be able to run again with no problem. This is good, but it really sucks that I won't be able to do much for a long while. A couple other guys on the team have had similar problems and have had long, frustrating recoveries. I have to remember that the damage has already been done and that I will have to get the surgery or else the piece floating around in the knee could cause further complications.

Things will get worse before they get better, but it sounds like many people are able to pick up where they left off running-wise after having the same surgery. If I don't get this done and deal with it, then I'll never have a chance of getting back to where I was.

I find this funny, because a year ago I remarked to Keith when we were in Sacramento that I had probably done some permanent damage to myself after running in college for five years. At that point an area below the knee had been bothering me for over a year and was getting increasingly sore. The soreness below the knee seemed to come and go with time, sometimes going away for months at a time. Over last summer and into the fall it seemed to go away almost completely, but then it came back in the winter and seemed to be the basis for the blowup in January. The doctor wondered what I had done to cause such a problem but neither he nor I could seem to come up with an explanation as to why things progressed from the soreness to the sudden explosion.

For the past few weeks I've been biking, but sometimes I can feel something in the knee when I just start out or really jam on the pedals. It hasn't been too bad and it's just as well because it's been so hot. Biking in Williamsburg is pretty enjoyable since it's only about 10 minutes to rural farm roads. I did go home this past weekend and fought the tourists biking on Atlantic Ave.

All the stuff for my M.S. degree has been turned in and I should get my diploma at the end of August. I don't think there is a ceremony or anything but I think I'm allowed to go to the spring graduation in 2009. My sister and I can "graduate" at the same time. I'll still be here another two, three or more years, though. I'm glad I decided to do the Ph.D., considering the alternative of working in a cube farm as usual and doing something boring and mundane that some boss wants me to do. The work here has been challenging and has kept my interest. The work from my M.S. project is being refined into a conference paper that we will try to get out within a month. I've read some strong arguments as to why to not get a Ph.D., but at this point I figure I have nothing to lose as long as I am fully funded and am making progress towards completion. Most of the arguments are about the increasing difficulty of getting a tenured faculty position, but most likely I will go into industry. Those at the places I've worked that had Ph.D.s had a lot of control over what they worked on and also seemed indispensable to their organization. They had a lot more creative license than the regular code monkeys. I just can't see myself being a regular run of the mill programmer for the rest of my life, always doing what someone else tells me to. Anyhow, if it hits the fan while I'm here, I can get out with my M.S. and still get a regular job.

A lot has been on my mind the past few months, but recently it's been dominated by this mess with my knee. The coming months are going to be a bigger test of willpower and attitude than during any period during my high school or college running career.

I got some mail today from the Dean addressing me as "Professor" in regards to my TA position. How weird is that?

I finally feel like I've gotten past the latest surge in work and don't feel as bogged down as I did a week or two ago. My work is more clearly defined.

I can get going on some implementation of the system I am working on with my advisor (finally) so that we can move on to putting out a paper. If I don't finish this, then I won't ever get my M.S. The Theory of Computation class has some difficult NP-Complete reduction problems so while that will be difficult to get through, I don't have to finish it right away. Looking at those problems a little bit every day is much better than staring at them for hours and getting nowhere.

Since I do have some free time, I got Call of Duty 4 through Steam. Though a lot of people complain about it, I really like the concept of Steam. There isn't any rummaging through various B+M stores looking to see if they have what you want. There isn't any annoying packaging and CD to insert everytime you want to play. There isn't any CD to lose, either -- you just redownload.

I've played through a portion of the game already in the past day since I downloaded it and so far, it's been great. It's very cinematic and the battles seem so out of control. A lot of the time I feel so helpless with stuff blowing up all over the place and bullets screaming by. At the same time, though, the game depends on you to get stuff done. The other soldiers you're with won't advance until you do, so you do have to make some kind of progress. If you don't, they'll just hang back and the enemies will continuously respawn in the same places. The linear aspect of the game is the only drawback (along with a pretty weak AI), but the action definitely makes it fun. I haven't played the multiplayer yet, but I heard it's great, which is one of the reasons I bought the game. With many games, the multiplayer is pretty bland, so I'll finish the singleplayer and then leave the game to collect dust -- four hours of gameplay isn't really worth $50. But, a good multiplayer that allows hours of fun in addition to good singleplayer allows me to recoup my investment.

I also saw Into the Wild, which prompted me to buy the book. The movie reminded me of a few guys on the team that had a similar attitude as the main character. It would be great just to cut loose and forget about all the nuances of every day life, except this guy really did it. Christopher McCandless graduated college and decided to hitchhike, hop trains, kayak to Mexico, and live in a bus in the Alaskan wilderness. Unfortunately, he took it a little too far and starved to death. It seemed that he didn't have much knowhow in terms of wilderness survival, or that maybe he wanted it to go that way. The movie (and maybe the book) got me thinking about what it would be like if I just up and left without telling anyone. To disappear into the great beyond with no real destination in mind. Forget sleeping in the same bed every day, going through the same old routine, going to class, eating the same bland food, and seeing the same things. Every day would bring something new and exciting. Of course, it wouldn't be any walk in the park -- things that I normally take for granted would suddenly become a huge problem, mainly food, shelter, and just general health kind of stuff.

The Colonial Relays were this weekend and I caught a little bit of the meet. A few of the guys who recently graduated came back and it was nice to see them. Most, like myself, are still in school, just somewhere else. It's funny how removed I feel from practicing and competing despite still running every day from the locker room and seeing everybody that's still here. At this point it's difficult to imagine racing. Just running is an accomplishment at this point.

The semester is coming to a quick end -- only 3 weeks and two labs left to TA. Hopefully I'll finish everything successfully.

I've decided to reactivate my Facebook profile. It seems that the big brother style ad "feature" died a quick death due to all the backlash, which was the main reason I left. Besides, it's not like it was adding that much more time to my already wasteful internet browsing routine.

What's more, I seem to be isolated from a lot of the things I used to do (practice) and am focusing more on other activities (school). Going back, it seems that I will be able to follow what's going on in my old life a little better.

I think it's going to be an interesting match between Facebook and OpenSocial with the focus being on user-generated content and custom apps/plugins. I wish I had some ideas to make some of my own. At this point, I can't think of any itches that need scratching.

This semester is busy and filled with all kinds of stuff for me to do, but it's coming to an end quickly. Looking at the calendar, there are only five more weeks of classes. I've got a wireless paper presentation, a handful of assignments for Theory of Computation, and a wireless project paper and presentation along with the usual readings. That's just the stuff for my two classes.

Then, I've got extra stuff for my adviser for the M.S. project/research which is really an extension of my wireless class project. There are weekly things he wants me to do which can make things tough. Since he keeps changing his mind on the details of the project, I have to continually refine the paper I'm working on to reflect these changes. I really want to just pick something and go with it so I can do some actual implementation, get some experimental or simulated results, and put the stuff in a paper. Then I can get my M.S. degree. The deadline for my M.S. paper and project is basically next week and my adviser didn't want to push it, so I (hopefully) will get my degree in the summer.

The end of the semester won't be the end, but I'm hoping that I'll be done with my M.S. stuff by then. I then have to apply for candidacy into the PhD program (actually I don't even have to be done with my M.S. project for that), but I have to be done with the classes I am taking this semester. Hopefully I can choose a committee without any problems and they will look at my classes and grades and say: OK. Hopefully. This all seems like a dream and it's hard to believe that this is where I am in my life.

There are only four labs left for my intro Java class, so there won't be too much left for that. Some of the labs are getting more complicated and some of the students are having trouble with some of the concepts (arrays, interfaces). I do my best to help, but I can tell that some of the students don't like me. This is mainly because I get as frustrated as they do when I can't explain something to them very well. As I've said before, learning to program is an individual task -- spoon feeding the answers to problems doesn't help you learn. Teaching the concepts helps, but you really have to work on stuff on your own to truly understand everything. I have to try to get the students to think independently. I try to make them ask the right questions about what went wrong when they have problems.

The housing selection stuff for the gradplex is this week so my roommate and I have to pick out a place. We have to find another building since we are going to be here in the summer. The one we are in now is going to be renovated. Unfortunately, the building also has the laundry machines for the whole complex. I have a feeling they will just close off the whole place and I'll have to go somewhere else to do laundry. The computer science building is really close to one of the undergrad dorms which has laundry machines. I could drag my stuff over there and do it while I'm working in the office.

The other day I was thinking about taking home a lot of my winter clothes since I wouldn't need them anymore. Then I realized: What's the point if I'm going to be in Williamsburg year-round? I can just keep everything there and not have to take it home. That seems weird. It's like I'm gradually starting to move out of home. At the same time, though, I've gone home a lot more than I used to.

I have gone home a ton and I'm at home again now. It's nice to get good food and to sleep like a rock when I'm here. My dad is here for the first time in what seems like forever since he is always working. It seems a lot more peaceful at home than at school when there's always someone that's crashing around in the building or yelling outside. Despite that, the undergrad dorms, and especially my freshman dorm, were like pure mayhem compared to the gradplex. I'll probably wind up at home again next weekend since it's Sarah's birthday. Also, she probably won't be able to come up to Williamsburg because of her job. Funny that this time around, she just ordered what she wanted online (a coat) and I'll just pay her back for it. It doesn't seem like much of a present since I don't wrap it or even get to give it to her, but it's probably for the best since it's something that she wants and will enjoy. At least I got a card.

The going isn't necessarily ideal, but I am making some kind of progress.

I always make my own schedule for school to try to get things done by a certain date or time so that I can stay ahead. It almost never happens, especially over longer breaks like this one. As with most spring breaks, most of the week will go by without doing any work at all, and then I'll do some right at the end. I'll never do as much as I had hoped, meaning that everything I have to do gets crammed into the next week or so. This week I've got to finish some work on a paper, read two papers and write some comments for them, grade and prepare for the next lab, and get going on another Theory of Computation assignment. It doesn't seem like a lot, but I've got more irritating meetings and extra classes to deal with again.

Overall it was nice being home for an extended period of time, though my only wish was that I wasn't injured. I did get to see Sarah quite a few times since she has an elliptical machine and I could use that one instead of going up to the local gym. She came over and ate dinner at my house one night, which was nice. We watched quite a few movies when I was on the machine, but finished only one or two since I only went for an hour at most.

It seems there is less and less a distinction between going home and school since there is always stuff I've got to do. I might go home again next weekend since my former roommates and teammates Dan and Jason are coming to run the Shamrock half marathon. I wanted to do the full marathon, but thanks to all this crap going on with my IT band, I can't.

It's nice with the time change that it stays lighter later. The sun angle is getting higher so it doesn't look like the sun is perpetually setting. It does seem to be getting warmer too. A few days ago it was 75, but with seemingly hurricane force winds. A neighbor's giant oak tree snapped in half and came crashing down into the lake. What a mess that made.

Invariably, after any period off from school longer than a weekend, torrents of the same inquisition echo across campus:

How was your break?
Was it a good break?
Where did you go on your break?
What did you do on your break?

Everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off screaming these same irritating questions at each other. "Blah blah blah break blah blah blah." I would venture to say that 95% of the students do the same thing as I do: go home and do nothing. I ran into a bunch of teammates on Friday before I left as most were heading to practice for a workout. They all seemed jealous that I got to go home while they all had to stay at school for most of the week to practice and get ready for IC4As. I consider them to be the lucky ones. They get to blaze around the track in tough workouts and head to Boston for one of the meets I've enjoyed the most. Plenty of times this semester I've walked by the track on the way to the UC for dinner and seen everyone working out. It leaves me feeling sad that I'm not a part of that anymore. I would feel a lot better if I could run again normally and I could join them again at least one or two days a week.

Sarah has an elliptical machine at her house so I went over there yesterday and did that while she did some homework. It was better than the rec center since we put on Animal House and I had to strain to see the only clock in the room. The machine was a lot different than the ones at school -- the school ellipticals are more like those nordic trac skiing machines and don't make you cycle your knee through much of a range of motion. This one was more aggressive and its resistance was also greater, which probably put more pressure on my IT band. It didn't hurt, but it seemed a little tight afterwards. I'll try some running today to see how it goes (a couple loops around the block) and maybe head over there for some more elliptical. I don't enjoy it that much, as I've said, but it's better than sitting around and being a bum.

I do have some work to do over the next week. First, I've got to typeset and turn in the Theory of Computation homework that my professor has been so lenient about. I've done the actual work on paper, but now I've got to typeset it, and I feel really lazy and don't want to do anything school related. I've also got to start on the design overview for the sensor network project I'm working on. As it turns out, my Theory of Computation professor said most Master's students who do a project just write a paper based on a proposed system but don't actually implement anything. If I can convince my adviser to finalize our design as quickly as possible (we've been screwing around a bit and changing things), then I might actually be able to get the paper done by the end of March. If I do that, then I'll make the deadline for the Master's project and get my degree in May. That would be nice, but I'm not betting the farm on it. This week I should also modify my TA lab grading script to handle infinite loops when running students' code.

My dad has a trip to San Francisco this week, so that would be cool to go out there and come back, but I doubt there will be empty seats on the plane. Since I'm hurt, worrying about having to run hasn't been bothering me as much, so I can be more flexible about stuff like that. Unfortunately, I'll probably just be stuck here.

Screwing around on the Internet as I do nearly every day, I came across something interesting: a maple-flavored pie that someone had found at some restaurant in Vermont. The pictures and testimonial made it sound really good, so I scoured the Internet for recipes. I found one that appeared on several sites, which took maple sugar. Since you can't really get that in a store around here, I ordered some from Vermont and made the recipe with the help of my mom (with the crust). It wasn't all that great and didn't look like anything in the pictures. It came out more like a maple flavored quiche -- very eggy. Later, I found the recipe that was probably the one in the pictures and variations of it. Basically, just condensed milk or cream, maple syrup, and some versions have flour, but no eggs. I could try making that one.

Being able to eat decent food and sleep in my own bed are two great things about being at home this week. Since the first day of my freshman year, I've never slept well at school, but as soon as I'm home, I'm out like a rock every night. I don't know what gives. Also, the UC food has been really crappy and repetitive as of late, especially with regards to having some kind of vegan patty just about every night as the main attraction. Being able to eat good stuff again has improved my mood.

So, that pretty much sums it up for the next week or so. I guess now it's off to see how my IT band does today.