July: the month that needed a week or three added.

July 31, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

Day 2 of SAS.

Very happy of the panel that I ran with Kalynnda Berens and Mats Heimdahl on the future of V&V. We spoke on how open-source, off-shore, and model-based software development could change how we do IV&V in the future. It was a great show: fun! We lead the whole room in a lively debate that folks spoke of for hours afterwards. I got invites to two other conferences to run the same panel: all the way from Pittsburgh to Pakistan.
Long, long day. Another breakfast at 7am. Talk all day. Some strange airplane competition Lisa organized for that evening. Got home at 10pm to the wife and house guest I've barely seen all week.

July 30, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

The annual software assurance symposium started today.

A three day festival of V&V research.

Folks in from around the country.

But each day had to start at 7am with a breakfast of juice, quiche, and software science (my favorite diet). Ken McGill lead that meeting when the 2004 SARP selection committee would walked through each day's presentations.

Anyway, at the award ceremony, I had the interesting experience of having my wife watch me get an award (contribution to the SAS) while being applauded by a room full of folks from around the country. Wes Deadrick's speech with the award told folks that I was always late for meetings and the first thing I asked when I arrive was "what is the time". He then compared me with the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. So, naturally, he gave me a great huge fob watch- just like the white rabbit.

July 29, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

Tuesday was a quiet drink at Oliverios- farewell to Helen, Jeannie, and Meg, my birthday party, etc etc.

Oliverio's began kind of quiet then it got real blurry. At least for me. I blame Gwen and Cathy and their shots. Actually, I think I blamed them several times (but its a little hard to remember).

July 28, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

43 today (photo courtesy of the talented Gary Boetticher).

43 is a prime number. So am I in my prime? Primitive or prime meat? One is not yet ready while the other may be well done, and served up for others to eat. At least I know I am not primed to explode- I've already had the mid-life crisis.

Last week, much too much happening. Next week, much rushing around and much on the line. And Helen leaves for the West Coast in eight days and I won't see her again till ?? October. But for now, just now, all is quiet in the midnight hour and all seems possible still. I am 43 and am as content as I think I can be.

July 27, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

Peace in the valley: Right now, its Sunday morning, church time. No cars in the street. Will get bastard hot before the day is out, now its only embracingly warm and not in-your-face heat wave. Very nice on porch.

Helen asleep upstairs. Went to bed before her last night- left her watching a vampire flick "Queen of the Damned". She's got this whole vampire thing going. Can't say I mind. I asked her a few days ago "does this mean life is going to get a whole lot kinkier?". She replied "wait till your birthday". Birthday was celebrated yesterday and I just want to say: sigh and purr. In my view, Helen should keep right on reading those vampire novels.

Must, must, must get the ECS grant done today and it is dribbling out like blood from stone.

This week is the Software Assurance Symposium. Landmark event on the calendar for me. I was hired in the wake of some very poor presentations by WVU at SAS01. SAS02 went great: WVU shone and NASA threw more money at us. SAS03 has to shine brighter to repeat that effect. Fingers crossed

Movies: Whale Rider (5/5): What a film should be. Raw, complex, primitive and profound. Seemingly simple but rich. Rewarding to watch, stuff to think about afterward. Did I mention I liked it? Leaves Lara Croft for dead.

Lara Croft: Cradle of Life (2/5): No fun. No sense of humor.Lame disco ball being the key to finding Pandora's Box. Don't bother going.

Max (2.5/5): Here's a plot premise for you- Adolph Hitler turned tyrant cause he couldn't get John Cusack (a Jewish art dealer) to get him a gig as a painter. Now cast Noah Taylor ("Byrce" in Lara Croft) as Hitler and the madness is complete. The film is flawed- the editing is just wrong (no sense of pace); the accents were all wrong (Scottish, American, English accents- all meant to be German). But Taylor was brilliant- he's a swiss army knife of acting, able to do anything. "I would like today to address ze Jewish question", he began, and went on to scream and posture and spit on the stage that made me very very afraid. Great in parts, on the whole- no wonder it went straight to video.

July 23, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

This week was taken up by a trip to Washington for an NSF panel.

What a week. Growing alarmed at my work load- did nothing on green card stuff (that will bite me next year- won't be able to get an income outside of WV till I sort that out). ECS grant is going sooo slow. Like an albatross around my neck.

Driving: The drive down was great, then hell. Had "The Ludlum Supremacy" on tape. Repeat for four hours:

• "A fuselage of bullets cut the Russian agent in two."
• "The doors flew open and Adam Webbs mind reeled in horror at what he saw inside."

Ah, they don't write them like that any more.

Anyway, that kept me amused for hours on route to D.C. then I hit the beltway at the same time as a rain squall. The beltway is a freak-out at any time- real contrast to West Virginia. Add rain and subtract my life expectancy.

July 18, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

Good bless ritual chemical catharsis. Got drunk at Jenny Campbell's party and spent all the next day in a happy blur. Haven't been blissed in ages and ages and ages. It felt wonderful wicked and well-deserved and other words which want to start with "W".

Other folks got a little blissed too. Here's Jeanie who passed her PhD exams this week. You'd be blissed too.

Moving: A little too much happened this week. Much fretting about accommodation. Found a great place to live in till December so we all relaxed and stopped looking. Then the great place rang up going "um, ah, well, the thing is...". So it was back to looking at shitty dirty Morgantown flats. A long string of them. Getting more yucky at every step. Finally, late in the week, found a place out on the edge of town- a little community of bungalows. My Shangra Lai.

Speaking of moving, we bought Lucie's transport cage for her 3000 miles journey across America. It looks so good, I think I'll move in. Oh- and Helen got the quote for moving our stuff. Scary stuff.

What else? So much this week:

• Much reviewing of papers (88 for OSMA, 8 for NSF).
• X-windows on MAC looks very interesting. I may give up on LINUX and Windows and go to that new UNIX box manufacturer called Apple.
• The DS vs IQ shoot-em-up continues. IQ winning but we found the feature subset selector error in DS that could make DS out-perform IQ
• Big plans for WVU and NASA next week. Much pow-wow with Bojan.
• The great coffee disaster: coffee machine stopped working. Disaster.
• Decided not to go to OZ in September. November instead. Found I have 150 hours leave saved up: better spend it!

July 13, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

Our kind of Sunday: Just your usual Sunday. Slept in, went for a swim and some lunch, then a little drive around some pleasant Morgantown streets. The sun was out (finally) after raining for most of the week.

For the rest of the day, our two dinks sitting in the lounge for hours and hours, messing around on computers, gently arguing over who will make coffee next.

We are now living in a land without big couches (sold them at the garage sale). Squeezing ourselves into the tiny IKEA couches. All very sad.

Jeannie and Meg came over to show off new puppy. Their old dog (poor Panster- R.I.P.) got run over and had to be put down- they were so upset. New pup ("Pip") is the best therapy. I had a good "I like dogs moment".

Moving: Got word that WSU can get us moved August 7 so we spent the weekend trying to find me a place to live August to December. Actually, Helen had spent the whole week ringing round and looking at places. Very depressing. The places that took short-term were few and horrible (dark, dank). And the landlords were kinda unreliable- we spent a peaceful half hour standing in a light rain Thursday night waiting for someone (who never came) to show us a flat.

But we went out hunting again and we found Robert and the most amazing light bright house. He seems quite sane, keeps cats, does not want a deposit, and this could work quite nicely.

Work: Much stuff.

• Got 88 proposals for the OSMA SAS to review (ten pages each). Actually, since I only consult (not actually score), I find that this is real quick- I only need to be familiar with the technical area that the proposal comes from (so, if asked, I can act all learned).
• Been invited to be on an NSF panel- get to see how this stuff works from the inside. Kinda funny cause this particular program is one that rejected one of my proposal- and now that qualifies me to judge other folk's stuff.
• Working WVU's SAS presentations. IN box filling up with many drafts of HUGE Powerpoint files. Much business-level writing, many groovy graphics, many rewrites.
• Working with Jim Kiper on our revision to the ECS proposal.
• John Powell has asked me into his ECS proposal. Seems he needs some more university content in his work. If successful, my old grad student will tell me what to do. Tables turn.
• Meet with Bojan Wednesday to debate IQ vs ROCKY vs his Dempster-Shafer tool. Ah the curse and blessing of having common data sets, and common success criteria. Most of the dialogue was just synchronizing our terminology and experiments so we can compare out work. Very stimulating.
• Lots of issues with changing machines. Using a web-based thing for my off-site storage. Many problems with backing up and restoring my 3GB.
• Spend much of the week catching up with grad students. Kareem's stuff is coming along very nicely. Andreas is motoring along and Greg seems over the Prolog programming hump.

Movies: T3 (4/5) A worthy addition to the Terminator series. Required car chases, etc etc. Serious babe of a terminatrix. Very nice ending that showed a wonderful transition in John Conner and explains why he could be such a leader of the rebel humans.

Spirited away (3/5 for plot, 5/5 for the visuals) Great film. Ran a narrative style that I didn't get and suspect that is some eastern esthetic. Standard anime character drawings over a simply stunning set of backgrounds.

Hollywood ending (4/5) A Woody Allen movie with the premise that director of a film goes blind- but has to hide it. So he directs the whole film without being able to see a single shot! The more I think about it, the funnier it gets.

July 2, 2003

July 31, 2003 July 30, 2003 July 29, 2003 July 28, 2003 July 27, 2003 July 23, 2003 July 18, 2003 July 13, 2003 July 2, 2003

Web pages=128

Papers: The good news is that a journal paper of me and Ying's was accepted to IEEE Computer ("Data Mining for Very Busy People"). I'm happy about that since IEEE Computer is a top 17% journal.

The bad news is that I've had two conference papers rejected this week (at ISSRE03 and ASE03). Talk about "some you win and some you lose".

Grants: Heard today from Jim Kiper that our "Engineering for Complex Systems" grant survived the round one cull. Now we have till August 5 to write a killer 20 page proposal. Which I think we can- the ECS reviewers gave us some nice feedback.

Travel: At SEKE this week. Not the strongest conference and I'm feeling a little worn out by being away from home. Helen arrives July 3 and we'll do the San Fran tourist thing.

Movies: Adaptation (5/5): Great! A recursive screenplay about the problems of writing that screenplay.