Man, I never wrote about my trip to UNC. I actually did, but it was long and detailed so I didn't post it. But it was a great trip! I stayed with tanac and lutzethesweeper for a while. They were very kind hosts, and their house is great. They have more books than anyone I've ever seen (with the possible exception of john and christine back when they had a consolidated library), with no filler -- all high-quality stuff. Later on I moved to the guest house at Barb's cohousing community.

dragonpaws and I worked on SEM for a couple of days. I made some real conceptual progress, returning to concepts from my old SEM class and actually understanding them this time around. We hit a wall with the software, though. There must be seven or eight SEM packages, all closed-source, all the product of some grad student's spare time, and all still looking that way. No two give the same results.

The day after I arrived there was a celebratory dinner for Kimberly, who had just defended her dissertation. After I defended my friends had to peel me off the floor, but Kimberly was sprightly and seemed delighted to be at the center of a large noisy gathering. She said the next morning, her gratitude for us was the first thing on her mind. Kimberly is a sweetheart. It almost makes me not hate her because she knows how to do SEM.

Barb didn't have as much time to give me as she did on my last trip down, and I didn't have as many cool findings to give her. I've spent a lot of hours plunging through this thicket of flaky, incomplete, heavily subdivided data, and I spent more during my visit. In the end I was able to pull out at least a few treasures. We at least came up with an outline for a paper.

I spent some time during the week wandering around the psych building, confabing with the other students in Barb's lab. They're all great! I talked to tanac about collaborating on a study I'd designed but hadn't managed to run, and I tried to help Tanya with two technical issues and fell flat on my face both times. I tried to ask Lahnna and Kimberly some questions about random effects models, but couldn't even frame a question well enough for them to answer. I gave a talk on the data I'm trying to thrash into a paper and got some good advice, despite my disorganization.

It made me so happy to have a lab! There were people who understood what I was doing and were excited and wanted to help, and who wanted to tell me about their work and asked questions and gave me ways to help them in return. We went out to lunch together and told stories and plotted behind our advisor's back. I really felt at home there! This is what grad school should have been like all along.

Oh, and on the last night there was a party! I walked into the common house where my room was, and everyone in the lab jumped out and shouted "SURPRISE!" I was pretty surprised, and I've actually gotten more surprised as I've had time to think about it. This has got to be the nicest, most thoughtful thing anyone's ever done for me (outside of my very closest friends). There was a tremendous web of duplicity dedicated to getting me into position, but I think the best part is when they told me that now I had to hide, because we were all going to jump out and surprise Kimberly. The deception for her was simpler -- they'd just given her a fake start time for my surprise party, and concealed the fact that it was also a party for her!

After Kimberly arrived there was food and wine, a long series of thoughtful presents and mementoes, and a cake with a latent variable structural equation model on it. It was the central figure from the big paper Kimberly and I had worked on... slightly adapted.



After that we all played Rock Band. We got Barb to sing! I discovered a new register in my voice that I'd never used before! And then I got hugs. What a great week.

I bought my ticket to San Francisco. I'm leaving on July 4th, my 30th birthday. This dramatic appropriateness comes courtesy of tickets happening to be cheap on that day.

Clicking the "no return trip" button was a poignant moment.

Shirt 1:



Shirt 2:

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Poll #1185891 I'm here to help!
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Check all that apply.

Sunday the 27th was the day I had to move out of the co-op. My flight to North Carolina provided a hard 3:00 PM deadline. Even though I'd actually planned ahead a bit and started working on it before the last second, I still got bitten by the asymptotic nature of moving. The last few bits of stuff -- comprising the most bothersome junk and the most fragile valuables -- take as long to pack as entire bookcases or wardrobes. The day passed in a frenzy of packing and guffing, and I had to call in euziere to help with some of the heaviest or most awkward bits. At last I got everything squared away, signed out with the keyholder, grabbed food on the way out, and jumped into the car with euziere at the stroke of 3. That might be rushed by your standards, but for me it's a triumph of prudence and good planning.

Sometime during the day, it struck me that I was expecting to feel stressed and panicked. But I didn't! I had a lot to do, and did it all, without making myself unhappy. This must be one of the siddhis that go with getting a PhD.

Or maybe you're just awesome.

It's been a long time since I've posted, and now I face a common problem -- it seems like before I post anything new, I need to give an accounting of everything that's happened since I disappeared, and so I put off posting even longer.

Well, I defy you, bane of the blogosphere! Instead of a review of my many amazing experiences, I shall post a low-quality youtube video of my feet.




I intended to show my physical therapist, but I never got to. I feel like posting a video of my feet on the Internet is, at a deep level, some kind of social commentary.

Everyone in North Carolina is talking about how humid it is, but I've felt parched the whole time I've been here, and that's with substantial water guzzling. I must really be dehydrated, too -- just now I stood up suddenly and had a good few seconds of near-blackout. When that happens I don't just get uncoordination and tunnel vision; I get ego-loss and dissolution of consciousness. I'm not sure that I exist or that I can understand what it means to be a person located in space and time. This would be very scary if it didn't happen in concert with distinct physical symptoms, but as it is I don't worry too much.

[note: I just gulped down a pint of water without stopping to breathe. I guess the dehydration explanation stands.]

One of my colleagues is developing a questionnaire as part of our work with Gallup. This is the first time I've ever seen someone taking the time to really do it right! Usually we just throw together some things that seem valid on their face, but she's actually collecting lots of preliminary data and looking at psychometrics.

If you'd like to help, you can take the questionnaire here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6_2fSt60F6Sztm1w2V_2bL7nnA_3d_3d

It will ask some questions about your personal strengths and how you use them. It takes less than 10 minutes, and some of the folks have said it was pretty enjoyable.

You might notice some redundancy in the questions. I normally wouldn't mention this but you're the kind of people who might spend a lot of time trying to figure out why we'd do that. It's not a trick, and you shouldn't scroll back to see what you answered before (seriously, please don't). Part of designing a questionnaire is asking about the same thing in several ways to see if they get similar answers -- if not, either some of your questions are broken, or what you thought was one thing is actually two different things that you mistakenly stuck together. So it's most helpful if you just answer all the questions honestly and don't second-guess.

I like knowing I can count on my friends for help, and I like being able to help them too. It seems like it should all even out. The problem is that some people are just more competent than others, and so you can end up with a gradual flow of help from the more competent to the less competent. euziere generously helped me get my stuff moved out of the coop today, and I finished at the very last moment before I had to rush to the airport for my flight to North Carolina. She's not likely to get herself into a last-minute crunch like that, and so if she inspires me to help friends in need, I'm likely to end up being generous not to her, but to someone even more hapless than I am.

The solution I can see is for those of us who are disorganized and disaster-prone to make sure we are proactively, extravagantly generous and kind to our friends. In that way the free flow of slack is maintained and the world will remain a good place.

Sunday 4/27-Saturday 5/3: Chapel Hill, working with my remote labmates

Saturday 5/3-Wednesday 5/7: Boston

Wednesday 5/7-Friday 5/16: Home (i.e., someone's sofa)

Friday 5/16: Houston, very briefly

Friday 5/16-Wednesday 5/21: Austin, for madhatter85's graduation!

Wednesday 5/21-Sunday 5/25: Chicago, for the Association for Psychological Science conference

Sunday 5/25: Home. Try not to leave for a while!

Afterwards: European Positive Psychology Conference (?), Farm Party (sometime)

Early July: Home (i.e., San Francisco!)

Hey, remember the post I made on statistical suppression? I was just puzzling over something strange in my data, and I discovered a real-life case of it! I was able to make sense of my data by statistically removing the suppressor.

What a great way to celebrate Passover!

Today I went to the ICC office to re-up my contract at the coop. I told them I wasn't a student anymore and that the president had sent non-student approval for me. Good old Ron was working the desk, and he slowly paged through the binder, ignoring me for a good five minutes, before reporting back that they had no record of my non-student approval.

The solution would have been to print out a copy of the email where Richard told me I was approved, or try to get him on the phone, or show Ron the house standing rules showing that temporary approval is automatic in cases like mine. Instead I walked out. I am done with the ICC.

This comes after the fiasco last summer when it looked like my stuff would end up on the street because they kept losing my documents -- actually, no. that's not the problem. Anyone can misplace some documents. The problem is the overwhelming apathy. The worst landlord I ever had at least acted like he wanted my money, but at the ICC office they literally seemed not to care whether I managed to sign a contract or not. No advice on clearing up the problems, no help reaching the people I needed, not even any encouragement. And it's not as if they had someone else to fill my slot. Every summer the co-ops go into a state of emergency, scrambling to get enough people to sign for the Fall that they'll be able to pay the bills. Maybe it's no wonder, when our contract-signing process is Kafkaesque at best and personally insulting at worst.

When I'm less worked-up I'll write a clearer and more scathing version of this and send it to Ron, to Shannon, to the general manager, and to everyone on the board. First, though, I have to figure out whether I'm going to have to eat my words here.

In five days I'm going to work at UNC, and my contract expires while I'm away. I had already made plans to stay with Murph and Cara for a month before I leave town, and euz says I can stay at her place for a while too (as if I didn't do that all the time already). A lot of my stuff is still boxed up in the trunk room (a holdover from when I thought I'd be leaving in December). I can pack up the rest with no great trouble, and I can probably pay the house (which is separate from the parent organization, and with which I have no quarrel) for a temporary storage contract. In a way this is a good thing, because it means that I can't put off packing until the last second, and that I get a chance to say goodbye to life here in an orderly way.

Although you do actually have to do it.

I would also like it if everyone in my life had their own theme music.

Anybody remember this?



I played Final Fantasy II (IV) when I was 15 or so. Twice in the game you face some insurmountable foe who crushes your characters, but at the last moment all the friends you met on your journey appear to fight at your side! Remembering those huge, stirring ensemble scenes has always been a source of courage and hope for me.

When I was getting ready to do my defense, I wanted to listen to the music for the scene above (it's just the standard FF theme, but there's no substitute for a 16-bit orchestral arrangement). I downloaded the FFIV soundtrack, but it wasn't on there! And so, the day after the defense, I got an emulator and decided I was going to play through the game. About five hours in I realized I could have just watched the scene on youtube, but by then I was committed.

It was interesting. The story and characterization were a lot deeper than I remembered, although the translation was every bit as awful. I guess I'm better at reading between the lines now. (Ironically, "you spoony bard!" turns out to be perfectly good English.)

One of the things I missed when I was fifteen was how badly the main character's life sucks at the beginning. At some point in the past he was bright, ambitious, and full of potential, but since joining the king's guard he's been sent on missions farther and farther from what he originally cared about. He's doing things he doesn't approve of and becoming a person he doesn't really like. As the game begins he's become sullen and isolated, hating the way things are but unable to see any way out.

I named him Michael. It seemed like an appropriate way to say goodbye to grad school. (later on Michael renounces the power of evil and releases the awesomeness he had inside. He also stops being such a dick to Rosa.)

I saw the orthopedic surgeon again yesterday. He's the one who seemed really insightful and confident a couple of months ago, and who set me up with that anaesthetic / steroid injection into my right hip. Yesterday couldn't have been more different. He actually seemed angry when I told him the pain had moved to the left hip. He said he couldn't even think about that, he'd never even looked at my left hip (which is not true).

( cut for whining )

So, the good news is that I got to see one of the top hip doctors in the country, and the bad news is that he sometimes acts like a prick. But the good good news is that the hip injection may have done more good than I thought, and that the next one might fix things. Although I still think there's something wonky about the way my left leg is moving when I run, and I suspect that's associated with the hip problems on both sides.

Anyone know a good running-specialty orthopedic kinesiologist?

When I moved back into the co-op last year, the soc-ed put together a photo board, and had each member write some information about themselves, including the well-loved "two truths and a lie." I wrote:

1) Runs marathons
2) Once drank a gallon of milk to prove a point
3) Is a bitter, bitter man.

I considered #1 true, even though there is some possibility that I will never run a marathon again. And sadly, #3 was true as well. I was disillusioned with my work at the time, I felt abandoned by my advisor and my program, and my life seemed isolated and unsuccessful.

But I'm not bitter anymore. Still kind of damped-down, not entirely reillusioned, not fully on top of things -- but getting better, and able to see the wonderful side of life.

This means I am going to have to drink a gallon of milk.

Today I met with the library experts on using Microsoft Word to format dissertations. They had to futz around for twenty minutes before they could figure out how to help me do things that everyone who earns a PhD from Michigan is supposed to do. Now I'm trying to replicate them on my computer at home and it's a giant mess. Before, I wanted to say this but I hesitated because I wasn't sure if I really knew what I was talking about. Now I'm confident:

Microsoft Word is a crock.

The Rackham Graduate School of the University of Michigan's dissertation formatting guidelines are a crock.

They combine to form a huge and worthless drain on my time.


I'm going to put in my chapter and figure and page numbers by hand, and I don't care how much of a stuck-in-the-1980s luser that makes me. I'm done with this.

I just realized that in eleven weeks, I'm supposed to move to San Francisco, California. At least two and a half of those weeks will be spent traveling. I have no plans yet. don_negro wants to rent a place with me, so I won't be homeless when I arrive, but I might be stuffless unless I figure out a moving plan soon!

Eight and a half weeks isn't a lot of time to say goodbye to Ann Arbor, either...

* mac geekery ahead -- if it seems irrelevant to you, then it is.

It seems that iWork files are like .docx files -- a directory containing an ASCII xml file plus some supporting stuff. But while .*x files are compressed, so they behave like normal files, iWork files are directories ("packages"). The GUI knows to treat them like files, but they break a lot of command-line tools. Far worse, they sometimes comethrough as empty files if you email them without manually compressing them... or sometimes if you do manually compress them. Applications work the same way, but you don't move, copy, or email applications very often. Guess what you do a lot of with text documents and presentations...

I can't believe Apple would do something so stupid and clunky. One might say that anyone who handles their files using mv and cp deserves what they get (especially on the Mac, still haunted by the ghost of resource forks), but breaking email apps is crazy. I hear it also messes up subversion.

Does anyone know of a fix / workaround for this?

And while I'm at it, does anyone know of an applescript / automator solution for making "save to .doc" a single-keystroke command?

Today was the annual Running Fit trail marathon. Two years ago today, I ran my first marathon. Last year, I was beginning to train for it again, but then I had to sit it out due to my hip problem. This year I've had to sit it out as well. Over the next few months will come the Dances With Dirt ultra and the Dexter - Ann Arbor half marathon, and I'll miss those for the second year in a row as well.

I'm back in physical therapy now and waiting to see the bigshot hip doctor again. The pain now appears on the left more than on the right. It looks like it may stem from the fall I took on my left hip at the end of last winter after all. One moment of carelessness that cost me about $500 and one of my favorite things to do in the world.

I can usually run about three miles these days before the pain becomes significant. I've come to hate the elliptical, and I won't get on one unless I seriously twist my arm. DDR is much worse than running; it flares my hip up almost immediately (as does real dancing). I wussed out on learning to swim or bicycle last fall, but I have another chance now. It will take determination -- running was fun the very first time I did it, but learning anything else will require a period of embarrassment, discomfort, and suckage before I'm good enough to get a decent workout or even just enjoy myself. I guess now's the right time to try and get that out of the way.