June 29, 2003

June 29, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 26, 2003 June 21,22 2003 June 19, 2003 June 8, 2003 June 4, 2003 June 3, 2003

Web pages=123

Papers: The second second LURCH paper got rejected by ASE. Very disappointing. It was about LURCH and Dave and me and Mats and Jimin worked hard to get it out. Worse, I was at the program committee meeting where it was canned and had to be all mature about it. Which was hard cause I was kinda bummed.

The next morning I woke up real early and went to talk to the big gum trees at Stanford University. Made me feel much better.

But every cloud has a silver lining. The reviews were incredibly detailed and, using those comments, we should be able to write a successful revision of the paper. Also, after the paper got rejected, some of the folks who rejected it were all keen to get Dave Owen out to AMES to work on LURCH-style search heuristics for their tools. So I guess in the process of rejecting it, they started thinking real hard about the technique and its possibilities.

June 27, 2003

June 29, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 26, 2003 June 21,22 2003 June 19, 2003 June 8, 2003 June 4, 2003 June 3, 2003

Web pages=123

Seminar at AMES today on LURCH and TAR3. Spend the day talking SE research to the folks there. They all live like rabbits in their offices- three, four folks packed into offices smaller than mine.

Spend yesterday flying across American reading Harry Potter. He rules! Kids are reading books this thick? Wow.

June 26, 2003

June 29, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 26, 2003 June 21,22 2003 June 19, 2003 June 8, 2003 June 4, 2003 June 3, 2003

Web pages=123

Grants: Think I got all my grants written, or co-written with others. Got real fiddlely at the end with financial controllers wanting this info or that rate. It all seemed so arbitrary to me- random requests for random data specified to some random level of detail until, at some random point, the controller says "Oh, yes, I see".

June 21,22 2003

June 29, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 26, 2003 June 21,22 2003 June 19, 2003 June 8, 2003 June 4, 2003 June 3, 2003

Web pages=123

Garage sale: God invented yard sales to clear our clutter. Its a neat trick- making other people PAY to take away your clutter. It was a fun weekend- meeting all these neighbors we'd never meet before.

Strangely cathartic- strong sense that it was some major EVENT in my subconscious: the point where I stopped visiting America and started living in America.

We have some pictures.

Movies: Rabbit-Proof Fence(4/5): Ouch. White Australia has a black history. 12 year old girl walking thousands of miles, twice, to get back to the family she was stolen from. Sadly, not ancient history. Must go pull out the phone and hide for a while.

June 19, 2003

June 29, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 26, 2003 June 21,22 2003 June 19, 2003 June 8, 2003 June 4, 2003 June 3, 2003

Web pages=123
Black bags=16

Ying's thesis: Today, Ying Hu successfully defended her masters thesis on treatment learning (download it here: 1.3MB). I had to call in via phone so I only heard the action. It was agony! I kept wanting to jump in and shout out the answers to the questions she was struggling with. And some of the questions were tough (e.g. Tak asked "what are the dimensions of confidence1?").

But I didn't need to: Ying handled it all very nicely. We'd done all these dry runs over the phone over the last month (even came up with a list of questions for me to ask her). Worked a treat- she was well prepared and confident (but not smug).

Oh- and here's a neat thing. A new masters student (Andreas) listened in at my end to defense and the private bits when the student was out of the room and the committee discusses the students in secret. Must have been an eye-opener for him.

Grants: Seriously smug today. Pulled off a grant proposal combination with Martha (from NASA HQ) and Barry Boehm (from USC). Actually, its been a big grant month- trying to work out deals with local contractors. Real eye-opener trying to work in with the different management structures and grant officers. And how very different they all are, what constraints they run with. Most educational.

The case of the missing month: Been looking back at May- ICSE, driving across the USA, going back for the OSU interview, not getting that job. Gee- that month just flashed by, gobbled up by too much action.

Ouch: Abrupt, sharp, honest email from old girlfriend in Sydney. The email was much politer than I deserved and very, very, very clear: no coffee with her come September.

Garage sale: Been busily throwing away crap. All those papers I photocopied in 1986, read once, filed, forgotten, but cart around the world for move after move after move after...

So all those relics are getting sold Saturday at a garage sale to anyone who wants to buy it. Come one, come all, buy little bits of me.

Movies: A Mighty Wind (4.5): is blowing you and blowing me. Tee hee. The more I think about this one, the funnier it gets. Did Mickey (of Mitch and Mickey) sing folk songs about bladder control products? I think so.

Treasure Planet (4): Much better than I had heard. Funny yes, yet with a surprising mature pace. Emma Thomsom as a cat (of course).

Helen: We're back in sync. It's no longer shocking that she's around and I think she has relaxed into the summer lifestyle her. We have another five weeks of that then its back to bachelor limbo till December.

Well, sort of. Going to Australia to a conference in September and stopping into Portland along the way. But there's only so much being married a fellow can fit into one weekend. And being married is not about weekends- its about months and years of simple little expectations.

June 8, 2003

June 29, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 26, 2003 June 21,22 2003 June 19, 2003 June 8, 2003 June 4, 2003 June 3, 2003

Web pages=123
Black bags=9

Black bags: Whenever I move, there is always much packing of black rubbish bags and hauling same up and down stairs. Up and down, up and down, up and...

Sssh, secret (part3): Well the big secret is out and it ain't the news that I wanted. In 2004, I may well be working at "OSU". Which is not "Ohio State University" or "Oregon State University" but "Oh Sh%t, Unemployed".

June 4, 2003

June 29, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 26, 2003 June 21,22 2003 June 19, 2003 June 8, 2003 June 4, 2003 June 3, 2003

Web pages=122

The Aitken's Diet mafia: I thought that dieting would make me some kind of obsessed food Nazi. I'd expected to have to hide the diet away to stop boring my friends. I was wrong! Dieting, it turns out, is what Americans want to talk about. If I was smarter, I'd understand why some mono-focused monk-like regime inspires such team-like devotion in the Yankees. Aitkens vs Zone vs Pritikin vs I don't know what. What team are you on? Go team! Eat, eat, that's our man, if you can't swallow, no one can!

Sssh, secret (part2): Waiting to hear back about the big secret. I'm told I should hear something this week. But I don't really care (yeah, right) if it does not work out (sure) since that kind of thing is not so interesting to me (who are you kidding?).

The Americanisation of Timm is continuing; e.g. last night my evening's fun was hanging out at a mall with Martin Feather. He glanced across at some gray building on the horizon and, with his Americanized eyes, recognized it as a cool place. Once inside, it was everything a mall should be- an antidote to the drab world outside, a neon hallunication of a better world, full of bright, shiny, lots of glitterring attractive things that I just HAD to buy. And we drank Starbucks.

NASA's Assurance Technology Symposium (Day2): All the software assurance stuff is scheduled for day 3. So yesterday and today was not central to my usual interests. Dreary dreary rain. Much moaning about Cleveland's missing summer. But the good news is that these meetings are great spectator sports. For example, last night, we had a certain senior non-gender-specific NASA official staggering drunkedly over to our table to mingle with the troops. He/she said some funneeee things which we taped and plan to sell to the highest bidder on eBay.

June 3, 2003

June 29, 2003 June 27, 2003 June 26, 2003 June 21,22 2003 June 19, 2003 June 8, 2003 June 4, 2003 June 3, 2003

Web pages=121

Irony: So, Helen comes back to WVU for summer and the first thing that happens is that I have to rush off to Oregon. Then I get back and the very next day Helen goes to Chicago (she's a consultant to a Smithsonian traveling exhibition). And when she gets back, I'll be at Cleveland at a NASA conference.

NASA's Assurance Technology Symposium (Day0): Drove to Cleveland with Ken McGill for the NASA Assurance Technology Conference. This is the second year we have done this and its as close to a road trip as nurds like us can handle. We talk about silly and serious stuff for hours and hours and hours and...

Coming to American: The countryside on the drive to Cleveland was pretty. And that is the same countryside was somehow plain and dull to me only a few years ago. Guess my anti-USA snobbery has finally boiled off. I can see things now without the "Not Australia" warning light flashing and blinding me.