nathan and audrey

Today my son completed his first year of life! I generally have an indifferent feeling towards birthdays, but this one is worth distinguishing. It has been a year full of the wildest ups and downs. The most challenging and also the the most rewarding. I’m very proud of him, and all that he has learned and achieved. It is amazing what a baby learns in that first year. Knowing nothing but the warmth of mommy’s womb and being fed then out of nowhere he is thinking, perceiving, talking, crawling, laughing, crying, and loving. This is his experience, and it is truly amazing.

This picture is our first time in the swing on his first birthday! Yeah baby!

So my son I hope the best for you in the second year of your life, and I pray that I will never be too focused on other things to really experience you. You are precious to me and nothing is more important than you (although some just as important, like your mommy ).

::n::

Learning from mistakes is really exciting isn’t it? Well today I learned a valuable lesson: if you want to ride your bike after some extended time in weather such as this photo make sure everything works.

Last winter I underestimated, or rather didn’t know, that in the midwest metal rusts, fast, especially bike chains. I got on my bike and this awful clicking and lack of motion hit my bike. So this winter I was prepared for the chain issues and have been keeping it well oiled. One thing I did not consider though is that shifting functionality could be affected by the freezing temperatures as well.

As I first tried to shift today I quickly found the err in my way, but was too far along on the trip to turn back (< 1 minute in). I’m pretty determined like that. So I write this post to tell you if you want to ride your bike after some extended cold weather time off, make sure to check that your bike is capable for the next trip. I’m hoping next year I don’t need to learn the same way for my breaks .

::nathan::

Yesterday I was holding Garbanzo, feeling him kick inside mommy’s tommy, and I realized that in approximately two months he will be outside of mommy! It seemed so surreal. To think, “Wow! How did we get here? How did we get so blessed with this opportunity of  life?” I realized how hanging out with baby had become normal and just is what it is, but in two months our little bean will be out and about. It seems so far away and yet so close at the same time, and the great thing is that, I’m not worried about it at all. I’m so excited to to have the opportunity to instill life and opportunity into this child.

I also started to think about how responsible I am going to need to be. Taking care of Audrey, of course, is an important and tough task , but a baby is so much different. I will be responsible for this person’s safety and provision. I will be the one to impart wisdom (anyone know where I can get some of this?) into our child’s heart (of course Audrey does this as well, but it is a very me centered post). This child will look to me to have the answers to all of life’s questions, and I have been given the responsibility to meet that expectation, even if it means I to teach my son about how we sometimes just don’t understand things in life.

We (Audrey and I) will get to share this person’s joys and sorrows. We will get to know him in such a detailed way. It is so cool knowing that, Garbanzo, already has a unique personality. Not a performer, as recent visits with family proved, what else will he be like? Will he look like mommy or daddy? Will he be mild tempered like his mom or have a bit of pep in his temper step like his dad? It’s so cool and exciting seeing characteristics now, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of them will be.

I’m really excited about being a dad. It is such a jump in responsibility, but I feel like it will transition smoothly (the responsibility thing, not the whole sleeping and lifestyle thing ). I feel like right now is the time and place where we are supposed to be. So I assume that in a few months the surreal feeling of needing to pinch myself will disappear into a sound of crying, changing diapers, tears, joy, hopes, and love.

-n

I have been thinking a lot about how to become more productive… how to kill this pervasive nature of procrastination… how to focus on a task and complete it when I desire. I have read so many blogs and papers describing techniques, and I’m still on the hunt for a good solution, but I have recently come across an idea that is shifting my paradigm a bit.

That revelation, given away by the title, is that time is a gift. I recently read the guide to The Pomodoro Technique, which has an interesting reference describing how we as humans relate to time. It discusses abstract concepts such as the notion of becoming and the succession of events, which got me thinking about how I regard time.

Last semester I had a major problem with starting tasks when I actually had enough time to accomplish them. For some reason my brain was so focused on procrastinating that I always started projects when there was far too few hours available to accomplish the task. I have yet to find an answer to solving this problem, but I have realized that I must stop viewing time as an entity that controls the way we live our live. In other terms I must stop measuring my success and failure with respect to time. Time will always win. It will grind out any competition.

We have all heard the phrases “not enough time for that”, “I need more hours in the day”, and the like, but what we are really saying is, “the task wasn’t important enough to do it.” We have to realize that time is not something that just happens and leaves us in the dust, but rather that time is a gift. It is something that when we have nothing to do we get to do whatever we want. Those moments are rare, but how stress free would our lives be if we thought of time as a gift and took full advantage of its presence in our lives?

So rather than sit at a computer and spend time on Facebook, Twitter, blog reading, espn perusing, I could maximise those hours to get the things I need/want to get done first. Then once those things are accomplished I can say that I took the gift and used it wisely.

I am so tired of accomplishing nothing, and at the end of the day feel like I have to rush something into completion just to gain some sense of accomplishment. This almost always produces shoddy work and is never really satisfying. All we are doing is attempting to convince ourselves that we aren’t useless, and in the end fail miserably anyways.

In conclusion, I’m going to stop being a slave to deadlines and turn them into opportunities to shine by taking and using the time that I have today to accomplish the tasks that I really care about.

-n

This is somewhat of a hard post to write about because in a large sense I don’t have direct experience in what graduate admissions offices are looking at with respect to your background. I do know that your prior research experience can be the difference between you getting accepted or rejected. Some of this section will come from the guide: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf written by Mor Harchol-Balter. She has a much better perspective on what is a positive and negative from the admissions office viewpoint.

To get into the top graduate schools you need the following:

1. Good GRE scores
2. Good GPA
3. Prior Research
4. Great letters of recommendation

The first two of these are not as important when competing at the top schools. The reason why is because most of your graduate life will be focused on one thing: research. Therefore, the most important factor at the top institutions is how good of a researcher you project to be. This projection comes primarily from your past research experience. So the key to looking good for the admissions office is to prove that you have great potential as a researcher. A 4.0 and 800s on the GRE are not good enough at this level.They may be required to hit the bar minimum, but those alone will not get you in.

The question is then how do I get research experience? There are several options which include: (the numbers and main sections here are as provided by the previously mentioned grad school talk, but the descriptions following the bold letters come directly from my own experience).

1. Undergraduate research with a professor. The relationship you develop with your undergraduate professors is extremely vital because not only will they give you research opportunities, but they will also be the people who write your letters of recommendation. I have had several great relationships with professors leading to great undergraduate research opportunities. I was able to perform departmental honors and get credit for said research. So the best option is to start discussing potential research opportunities with professor you know well. At the larger institutions the advisors carry a few undergraduate researchers, which is a good place to start. Find out what your school has to offer and go with it. The key to finding a research opportunity is to have a good relationship with the professor you want to work with. It’s important to note that I went to a somewhat smaller undergraduate department, which might have made it easier to find this connection with a professor. A better description of how to find a professor is here http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf :

1. How to ask a professor to do research with him:
   i. Make a list of professors with whom you might want to work. Most professors have a web page with lots of papers and descriptions of their research. Take your time and read these.
   ii. Make a summary sheet about yourself. This is a one-page piece of paper which you will be giving out. It should have the following information about you:
   (a) Your photo. Professors can’t remember names, but they do remember faces.
   (b) Your name and contact info.
   (c) Brief description of your research interests.(d) Your availability – are you looking for a full-time summer position, a part-time fall position, both? How many hours can you devote to this project? Are you looking for class credit?
   (e) List of every class you took and your grade and the professor you took it with (professors like to talk to each other about you).
   (f) Relevant previous experience and skills.
   iii. Talk with your undergraduate advisor – at CMU this is Mark Stehlik – about whether anyone has an open position for undergraduate research. Mark maintains many such lists.
   iv. Pick a professor from your list. Go to his/her office hours or send email to schedule an appointment (most professors prefer office hours). Explain your situation and give your summary sheet. Be prepared for the following questions which he may ask you:
   (a) Do you have any ideas about what you might want to do research on?
   (b) Which of my projects are you most interested in working on?
   (c) Describe your math background.
   (d) Describe your programming background.
   With very high probability the professor will thank you for your interest, but tell you that he isn’t taking on any undergraduates this term. This does not mean that he hates you! Be brave! Try the next person on your list. You may have to try this 10 times. Hang in there. If the  professor does say yes, you need to be prepared with your own list of questions:
   (a) What is the goal of the project?
   (b) What exactly will be my responsibilities?
   (c) Whom will I work with? – e.g., will you work directly with the professor, with one of
   his graduate students, with another undergraduate?
   (d) What background material can I read to learn more about this project?
   (e) What textbooks can I study to learn more about this research area?

2. Summer Internships: This is not only a great opportunity for developing research skills, but it also gives students helps studetns to connect classroom learning with real world problem solving. As an engineer this seems to be a big gap to bridge. I don’t think I would be ready to do research had it not been for several internships that I have worked at over the last 4 years of undergraduate time. So start applying for research internships. I worked with a few DOE labs in my undergraduate career.
3. Get a Job: I have been a student intern and applied to grad school directly from undergrad. So I don’t know too much about this. If the job is research based it will be a lot more useful than any other type.
4. MS Student Project: you will work on some project as an MS student giving you research experience. This one as well, I have no grid for.
5. Work Alone on a problem: Find out an area of interests and start reading papers on that topic. If you find an interesting problem, propose a solution and start working on it. I have never done this and it is actually more closely related to how you get your thesis topic as a PhD student. So this might be hard, but if you are driven it will help out.

I hope that this guide is helpful to you. Getting research experience should be started as soon as possible. You should start at least 3 semesters before you graduate so that you can prove you have experience when you write apply.

Any corrections or addions would be welcomed in the comments.

–nathan

Hey All-

I have just added my blog to this cool website: technorati. It is a sweet website to improve blog visibility. You register your blog and then when you post it does some cool stuff that quite honestly I have no clue what is yet. Okay so I just read up a little bit more and technorati is an internet search engine for searching blogs. So, it will help improve nathanandaudrey.com visibility on the web. I don’t know if that is really important or not yet, or whether we want that or not… lol.

Well this post is going to help me set up and claim my blog in technorati. So great intro and a post for technorati: Technorati Profile

–nathan

// Hello.java
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;

public class Hello extends GenericServlet {
    public void service(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException {
       response.setContentType("text/html");
       final PrintWriter pw = response.getWriter();
       pw.println("Hello, world!");
       pw.close();
   }
}

–nathan

// Hello.java
import javax.swing.JApplet;
import java.awt.Graphics;

public class Hello extends JApplet {
   public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
      g.drawString("Hello, world!", 65, 95);
   }
}

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<!-- Hello.html -->
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello World Applet</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <applet code="Hello" width="200" height="200">
    </applet>
  </body>
</html>