Matt Keally's Blog

The weather has been so cold and dry that I’ve had a huge rash of nosebleeds. Until this winter, I can’t remember the last time I had a nosebleed. Part of it could be because I’m indoors on the elliptical instead of outside running where it’s probably more humid. Despite using moisturizer, my knuckles are cracking and my skin is starting to look like that of an old man.

I’ve tried running a few times this week. I made it 15 minutes on Sunday without any problems and decided to quit while I was ahead. I went again Tuesday but everything tightened up after about 10 minutes. Gibby seems to think I should try running every day, but it seems so counterintuitive compared to most injuries I’ve had. He says it’s the only way to really loosen it up, assuming I stop and stretch everything when I feel tightness coming on. Interestingly, he also says I’m much looser than I was a week ago and that I am actually more flexible in the IT band area than another teammate who is also having the same problems. I doubt I’ve ever been told that I was more flexible than someone.

Over the past few days on the elliptical I’ve noticed that my left foot wants to point out. My right foot placement is fine, but the left one seems screwed up, most likely because of whatever popped a month ago. I’ve been trying to adjust my foot placement on the elliptical so the left foot is straight out and when I do, I can feel something in my knee protest. Something tells me that I may continue to have IT band problems in the right leg unless I can straighten out whatever went wrong with my left knee. The tracking issue/foot placement is probably causing some kind of screw up with my form. I really hope I didn’t tear something (like the meniscus) in my left knee, because the only option for solving that is surgery. It very rarely heals on its own. I keep reading on the Letsrun message boards about people with terrible IT band problems that last for years and they can’t run at all. I really don’t want that to happen to me. I’ve also read plenty of stories about people with meniscus tears, but it seems the surgery and return to regular running is pretty straightforward. I’ll have to see how this goes and if my left knee is still screwed up after another month or two, it may be a good idea to get it looked at.

Since spring break starts this weekend I’ll be going home so hopefully I’ll be able to get on an elliptical somewhere. If the public rec center is too crowded I may try to get a weekly gym membership somewhere. I could also try the bike, but I’ve heard that most people with IT band problems only make it worse with the bike since IT band injuries are common in cyclists. But, if it’s a tracking issue in my left knee that’s causing everything, I may be okay on the bike. Who knows. I’ll try running some more too, but I’m not getting my hopes up for a sudden, miraculous recovery. I never get those. Regardless, I don’t enjoy being inside on the elliptical or bike and can’t figure out why anyone else in the rec center at school would bother unless they don’t like the cold or are injured like me. Also, like me, maybe they can’t stand sitting still all day and go nuts if they don’t do anything. That said, it’s so boring suffering on the machines for an hour. What’s bad is when I decide to watch one of the TVs that are set up in front of some of the machines and one of them is tuned to CNN. CNN has a clock and it seems to creep by so slowly. A lot of the time, I’ll use one of the ellipticals by the window and cover up the timers on the machine so I can’t see the time. I’ll just listen to music the whole time, but I just ordered an 8 gig memory stick for my under-used PSP so I can put on some movies and watch those.

I also got the XM radio from my sister set up and working. Like she said, the reception is crap indoors. I tried using that on the elliptical, but even right next to the window, I got no signal. To get it to work in my room, I’ve got to attach an external antenna and practically shove it out my (south-facing) window. I can listen to it on the internet, which is what I have been doing instead. The radio itself would be good for the car, but I have no way of attaching it to the car stereo and I’ve heard that low power FM transmitters don’t work very well. I wonder how much a car XM receiver would cost? Something like that would have been great for the trip last summer, especially in places like Wyoming or Nevada where there weren’t any radio stations.

The caffeine addiction is becoming stronger. On the days I don’t have any, I feel more tired when I’m on the elliptical. When I have something with some kick to it, I feel that I’m ready to rock and time really flies by when I’m on the machine. Then, I’ll usually crash sometime later. It’s like borrowing energy from later in the day to use up earlier. I’ve also had some coffee in addition to the energy drinks I’ve bought. Coffee doesn’t seem too bad if I put a packet of sugar in it, even the school stuff which most people say isn’t all that great. It keeps me warm when I march around all over campus in the cold.

School has been tough with these faculty candidate presentations at 8 AM and meetings with my adviser. I get up early, go to the meeting, eat something, do the elliptical, rush back to class, do some work, and then it’s after 5. Hopefully that will be the end of those with the exception of the regular 3PM colloquiums. This week I’ve also had a very hard Theory of Computation assignment that just about everyone else is confused on. I’ve worked with a few people on it and we all are stuck on a few issues. I’ve got a lot of it figured out, but am still sketchy on some stuff. Fortunately, the professor pushed back the due date and we’ll have an extra class meeting tomorrow to help us understand. I would rather leave to beat the traffic home, but I’m here to learn and I want to understand this material — this is the big difference between undergrad and graduate school. In grad school, you aren’t just there to get by anymore. The more I look at something and can’t figure it out, the more I want to understand it, so I’m doing everything I can to learn the material.

I also had to give a paper presentation in my wireless class. Since the professor is my adviser, I was the first to go. As expected, he nitpicked on a few things, which seems common for new professors. Oh, no, I finished five minutes earlier than he wanted — the class is 80 minutes long — how am I supposed to prepare something that takes exactly that long when everyone interrupts periodically? I also had to arrange the slides exactly to his specifications, and include specific examples on stuff. Overall, he was satisfied, but there are little things he wants done exactly his way. This is also the case for the research stuff I’ve been doing too. I have to prepare things in a certain way, which of course, is the way he did them. What worked best for him may not be the best for everyone else and it seems professors learn this as they gain tenure.

On the flip side, the TA stuff is getting old. I really can’t wait until this semester is over so I can be done with a lot of this stuff and just focus on the research aspect. The students seem to have gotten over the programming learning curve and those that asked questions about everything and didn’t understand anything are figuring everything out. A couple of them wanted to take off early for spring break, but since lab attendance is mandatory, I denied access to the submission script until I started the lab.

I’ve also thought about moving this “blog” to either Blogger or WordPress, since LiveJournal seems to have a more immature audience. With WordPress, I would have to go back to my own hosting setup, but I’ve heard it’s worth it since you can control just about everything. My dad has paid hosting he said I could use, but it’s on IIS (puke), so it’s incompatible with WordPress. I should also start using the LJ tags and start segmenting my posts into different categories rather than just spitting everything out in stream-of-consciousness form every week or so.

That’s more or less how things stand as of this week. It will be great to get out of here and get some sort of break since it seems I’ve been rushing around with all these annoying meetings and assignments to take care of. Fortunately, the semester is half over, the days are getting longer, and hopefully the weather will get warmer. And I really hope I’ll be able to run again normally.