Posts Tagged racing
No longer the Vickers, but still holding up
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on December 16, 2009
Quite a bit has happened in the past few months since I’ve written anything substantial. With school picking up, it’s hard to write since both activities draw from the same energy source.
Today marks the first time since my knee surgery, nearly a year and a half ago, that I’ve run for seven consecutive days. The last time I ran six days in a row was at the beginning of September, and I felt awful by the end of that streak. From mid-August to the beginning of September, I ran about five or six days in a row and then took the other days on the bike to try to alleviate the completely trashed feeling from running. By the end of September, I had been running about six miles on the days I ran and started to feel more smooth doing it, but I was still pretty beat up.
Part of the beat up feeling was more than likely due to me favoring my non-surgery leg when running. I had been fighting an adductor strain on my right leg that gradually got worse until I was unable to walk without limping. While my left knee felt fine, my right leg hurt just about everywhere. At first, I thought it was just the humidity, but as the summer ended, the problems persisted, and I was forced to stop running at the beginning of October. From then until the beginning of December I spent most of the time on the bike, with a few botched attempts at running once my thigh problems calmed down. However, within the last few weeks I’ve been able to restart running while keeping everything under control. With the introduction of cold weather, it’s a lot easier to run than bike, despite buying warmer clothes to ride in the cold and rain.
At this point, I’m certain that I’ll never feel as good running as I did when I was on my college team. On the team, even on the worst days after a race or hard workout, I still felt light on my feet and able to cruise through a 10-15 mile run without thinking. Today, each step I take is a considerable effort, like I have to drag myself through five or six miles. Comparing how I felt when running on the team with how it feels now reminds me of a passage in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. A character in the book compares the power of a bandsaw to other saws and a Vickers machine gun to other firearms:
[T]he most noteworthy thing about the bandsaw was that you could cut anything with it and not only did it do the job quickly and coolly but it didn’t seem to notice that it was doing anything. It wasn’t even aware that a human being was sliding a great big chunk of stuff through it. It never slowed down. Never heated up.
Guns could fire bullets all right, but they kicked back and heated up, got dirty, and jammed eventually. They could fire bullets in other words, but it was a big deal for them, it placed a certain amount of stress on them, and they could not take that stress forever. But the Vickers in the back of this truck was to other guns as the bandsaw was to other saws. The Vickers was water-cooled. It actually had a fucking radiator on it. It had infrastructure, just like the bandsaw, and a whole crew of technicians to fuss over it. But once the damn thing was up and running, it could fire continuously for days as long as people kept scurrying up to it with more belts of ammunition.
Before my surgery and when I was on the team, it was as if I could just go forever and chew through any workout or race, “firing continuously for days.” I never slowed down and rarely heated up. There were limits, of course, but reaching them required hundred mile weeks, punishing pace runs, and draining interval workouts. Like the Vickers, there was also quite the support infrastructure of coaches, trainers, and teammates. But now only running a few miles is “a big deal” for me. It places quite a bit of stress on me, though it is easier than in the late summer. I’m quite sure I’ll have to spend a lot more time on the bike, but maybe I’ll get to the point where I’ll want to run a race.
With respect to school, I’ll be travelling to Stockholm in April to present a paper at RTAS. I’ve been working on several projects related to event detection with accuracy guarantees, which will probably form the basis for my thesis. I also went to RTSS in Washington, DC two weeks ago, but only a few tracks were on wireless sensor networks, but most were about job scheduling and cache replacement policies with the latest multi-core architectures. I’ll also be starting a project with mobile phones with a few other students in our department, which should be interesting. The traditional concept of wireless sensor networks entails small devices with cheap sensors and the processing power of a scientific calculator. However, mobile phones have considerably more power as well as onboard sensors and have more potential for practical applications that people would actually use.
It’s interesting that I spend much of my time writing, creating presentations, and sketching out designs and high-level solutions. About half of my time is actually spent programming. It’s probably a good thing since it gives me a balance between different tasks. Writing papers and creating presentations can be tedious since it can be difficult to cram in months of work into a short paper or presentation. It’s also difficult to create a good balance of high-level descriptions and details to keep people interested but not get confused. When working with a small group of people on a project for a long time, it’s easy to get stuck in a box and not consider things that outsiders would see as obvious. Working with a few other students on my next project should help with this.
It’s when I run into my old teammates that I realize that despite being in the same town and same school that things are really different. One of my teammates got married a few weeks ago and at the wedding, it really hit home that I’m living in a new era. We’re no longer kids. School has taken on a whole new meaning. My relationship with my longtime girlfriend has also taken on a new meaning. Many of the people and the places are the same, but life is different.
Road Races: Less Passion, More Money
Last weekend, my girlfriend ran the Rock N’ Roll half marathon at the oceanfront despite admitting that she barely trained for it in recent months. Afterwards, it was as if she could barely walk. “Why run it?”, I asked. Apparently, she paid $90 for the entrance fee and decided that the money to go to waste. So, what happened here? Why did someone force herself into doing something that she clearly would not if the cost was less? Increasingly, races are organized to make money, not to provide competition and/or enjoyment among the participants. It appears to be part of a larger trend to care less about making a difference and to care more about the bottom line. It isn’t about doing what you love, it’s about doing anything you can to get some green. When the dollar signs loom larger than passion, you get unprepared runners suffering through 13 miles to recoup their costs.
Years ago, the biggest road race in the area was the Shamrock marathon and 8k with a modest entry fee. The turnout was smaller, but the fastest finishing times were still comparable to today. Recently, the local running club handed over control of the Shamrock to a for-profit company. Volunteers were replaced by paid staff. Prize money for elite finishers was increased. What was a well organized regional race was turned into a full blown production with all the frills. Consequently, entry fees skyrocketed. The hype induced a similar increase in turnout. However, the fastest finishing times also only showed marginal improvement.
What does the average runner stand to gain by paying $90 for a race? As bad as $90 sounds, it was only the registration fee several months in advance of the race; the fee increased to $110 three months before. So, does that $90 get you better competition? At a smaller (and probably cheaper) race, there may be fewer runners, but the average half marathon runner will still find plenty of people to try and chase down. Is the $90 worth the dry-fit t-shirt or extra junk that comes in the race packet? Maybe the finishing medal is better. Or, maybe the experience is somehow intrinsically better just because the race was expensive. Clearly, the average runner stands little to gain by running in a large scale production-style road race orchestrated by a for-profit company rather than running in a local road race staffed by volunteers. Somehow, people still pay anyway and all the backhanded marketing hype draws them in record numbers like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.
The increased registration fees only really benefit two groups: the elite runners, and of course, the organizers. With increased entry fees at large races, elite runners are often provided with free travel and hotel rooms. Naturally, they don’t have to pay an entry fee while the increased costs to all other participants provide a larger pile of prize money to the elites. That $90 provided by 20,000 participants also does well in providing the organizers with a nice chunk of change. Those who were once volunteers and provided a great service to the community are now ransacking their fellow runners’ wallets for every last dollar.
It’s bad enough that the registration fee is so high for many of these races. It’s even worse that these high profile races don’t even allow registration transfers in case of injury, lack of training, or sudden employer-mandated travel plans. As a result, some strange things happen as people struggle to cope with a significant monetary loss. Some will trade numbers under the table, throwing off the results when a supposed 55 year old blows away the masters division with a near record time. Others who didn’t prepare or who suffered an injury may force themselves out on the course and punish themselves because they want to get their money’s worth. Others still may decide not to run altogether, leaving several thousand non-starts that could have been filled with ready participants.
I could never justify the cost of such a race, even after I had recently exhausted my college eligibility and was looking for races to run. I had considered slapping down a few massive entrance fees to run a few half marathons or marathons. Before I got that far, my knee gave out. It just isn’t worth it to fork over the $90+ for a race several months in advance that I might not be able to run because of injury. To me, it’s not the hype or the junk that comes in the race packet. It really isn’t even about the competition anymore. If my knee were to withstand a race, I would do it only for enjoyment and I don’t think I need to pay $90 to get that. Even if I had to pay for all of my college races, I don’t know if I could justify the cost if I had to pay extortionist entry fees at each one. I can get much more than $90 worth of enjoyment just by running on my own.
When I ran competitively, I only paid for a handful of races, most of them when I was unattached in college. I think I paid $15 for a cross country invitational at UVA, another $15 to run a 3k at George Mason, and about $50 to run the 5k at Penn Relays. That $50 at Penn Relays got me in a race with plenty of competition, including Alan Webb, who ran 13:30. I ran about a minute slower, just barely getting lapped by him at the end, but it was him and the other runners that helped me drag myself around the track towards the end. In that case, the extra costs of the entrance fee and travel may have been worthwhile, but such cases are outliers. Today, I’m no different than the average recreational runner and I don’t have to pay $50 – $75 more and travel hundreds of miles to race when similar competition could be found right where I live. That is, if it’s competition I want.
I consider myself very fortunate to have crossed paths with people who found that satisfaction didn’t always come from making money. I had high school and college coaches that gave most of their time to me despite earning little or no money. I ran plenty of local road races staffed by volunteers who came just because they loved to be there. It was this passion that came from people like these that helped me go a long way with my running career. Ironically, it was from the same people that I realized I could never run professionally. Like someone who forks over $90 for a race, there would be too much external pressure from a sponsor to run through injuries, train harder than I felt comfortable, and to turn a daily release into a daily grind. Money and love don’t always mix.
It appears as though things that were once steeped in intrinsic value are falling to the marketers. Road racing is only one example. Even coaching for these expensive races is now being offered at an equivalently steep price. Those who once freely gave their time and effort are now turning their passions into profit, raking fellow enthusiasts over the coals. Those who may have run for pure enjoyment are now forking over cash to attend pre-race expos, get race packets stuffed with “free samples”, and get hyped with bands blasting music along the race course. It’s one less thing that’s done because it’s fun. It’s one more thing done only for the money.
Bike Racing
Yesterday I was out on a ride and I went by a stopped group with people hunched over a map. I asked if they wanted any help, but they declined. An hour later as I was getting close to home I passed by another guy doing the same thing. I didn’t bother to ask him anything since I was just rejected by the other group. Instead, he got back on his bike and went along with me the rest of the way back to Confusion Corner. Several times I really blasted up a few hills and through a couple lights that were threatening to change. Since I’m pretty much by myself on the road, it gets fun when there’s someone else to make it interesting. The other guy also took his turn at the front and poured it on a few times.
As we made our way back to Williamsburg, the guy said he was here on vacation with his family. I guess the map made it obvious he wasn’t from around here. Like me, he said he ran in college and then turned to cycling and suggested that I should start racing. I’ve had a few people suggest this to me over the last couple of months, but I’ve never really considered it until now. I’m pretty sure that my future in competitive running will be somewhat mitigated, if not completely over. Today I was out again and passed by a pace line of JRVS guys. I thought about joining in but yesterday was a long day and I had also run this morning so I was pretty beat up. It did get me thinking though.
Since leaving my college team, the last two years have been spent more or less decompressing from that environment. Lots of my teammates have gone straight into competing in marathons once they graduated. A lucky few have even signed deals with sponsors. I remember a conversation in the Caf one night about what we would do in terms of running when we were done with eligibility. I was definitely going to keep running, but I wanted to go on how I felt, not based on a strict training schedule. There were plenty of days where I suffered through a workout or race when I was beat up from training over the previous weeks. I always thought it better to go on how I felt, but as being part of a team I had to do as directed by my coach and stick to the plan. There were a few times where a really hard week would put me in a hole and in the next week I would be taken out by injury. While I was given some respite from workouts when I was especially tired, it usually wasn’t enough. Conversely, there were easier days where I felt really good and would wind up putting down the hammer.
If I were to consider bike racing, I would probably have to revert to a training schedule. Just going out and screwing around for an arbitrary amount of time isn’t going to cut it. If I were to try it, I would commit to it completely. I could just show up to something local and see how it goes. I would probably get my butt kicked. I don’t think the training for the bike would be much different than running in terms of long range planning and workouts. The same principles will apply. There would be longer anaerobic threshold type efforts, hill workouts, intervals and gradual buildup of total mileage over time, which would decrease for the races I wished to peak for.
At the moment, I like just getting outside for awhile. A training schedule would add a burden that I would have to carry, and the past two years have been nice without that. But every time I pass by a group of guys tearing it up or manage to collect someone along the way, I remember what it was like and it would be good to do it again.
One year ago today…
Posted by Matt in microfracture on January 30, 2009
The day that my knee gave out. It was the day I went out on a freezing cold morning run and five minutes down the sidewalk I took a step and it all went wrong. It felt like my whole lower leg and quad just exploded. It was definitely a scary moment and I thought for a few seconds that whatever it was wouldn’t allow me to even walk.
Now it’s one year later on a similarly cold day and I’m on the other side. After a long period of pain and wondering what I had done to my knee, to the cartilage tear diagnosis and buildup to the surgery, the weeks of non-weight bearing, the months of wearing a brace, and finally biking again, I’ve come nearly full circle. A few of the guys on the team asked yesterday when I’ll be tying up the ol’ running shoes again. One even asked about racing plans. Not so fast…
My goal is to start once the weather gets warmer — the cold is probably one of the factors that led to my problems in the first place. The worst of all my previous running injuries started in the winter. I really also don’t care for freezing my butt off outside when I can bike inside. A part of me doesn’t want to start at all in fear that I’ll be in pain. I would almost rather just have the hope that I can run again versus the fear that I’ll never be able to.
I have a hard time believing it’s been a year since all this went down. I feel a lot better now than I did then, especially knowing what was wrong with me. I waited for months until the pain and irritation got so bad to go to the doctor, but there wasn’t a day that I wondered why my knee gave me such trouble. I remember clearly the day I hurt it, getting into the car and feeling unbearable pain each time I put in the clutch. Stairs were a nightmare, and even extending my leg when sitting down was pretty bad. At the least, I know what happened and I’ve tried to get it fixed. It’s possible with advances in stem cell research that I could get an injection that would regrow my lost cartilage to its pre-tear state. I could go back to running as if nothing ever happened. Now, I’ll be satisfied if I can get out the door a few times a week for a couple of miles.
I’m really starting to face the reality that I’m getting older. I know I’m not that old, but most of the doctors I’ve seen for various running injuries have told me that I’m not an invincible high schooler anymore. Stuff is going to wear me down more than it used to and I’ve got to pay attention. My coach calls them “old man” injuries. I even get called “old man” when I occasionally drop by at practice.
I guess this just boils down to the fact that I wish that I didn’t have to worry about coming apart at the seams. Ray Kurzweil goes on about how much of a PITA it is to give our bodies constant attention and to still have them break down on us — that a better solution is needed than just advances in medical technology. I really can’t stand to have to dedicate so much time to bodily upkeep when I could be doing something else. Imagine how many more interesting things we could be doing instead of having to sleep, eat, drink, brush our teeth, and handle other annoying bodily functions. They always seem to get in the way when I want to put my attention elsewhere.
Though uploading my consciousness into a computer as a program sounds like a radical idea, it would certainly take care of most of these annoyances. The question would then become one of experience: would existing as a computer program provide the same sensory experience, satisfaction, and overall quality of life as in a real body? I’m not sure. At this point I would have to say no, but maybe a few more years of aging will change that.
Downtime
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on April 5, 2008
I finally feel like I’ve gotten past the latest surge in work and don’t feel as bogged down as I did a week or two ago. My work is more clearly defined.
I can get going on some implementation of the system I am working on with my advisor (finally) so that we can move on to putting out a paper. If I don’t finish this, then I won’t ever get my M.S. The Theory of Computation class has some difficult NP-Complete reduction problems so while that will be difficult to get through, I don’t have to finish it right away. Looking at those problems a little bit every day is much better than staring at them for hours and getting nowhere.
Since I do have some free time, I got Call of Duty 4 through Steam. Though a lot of people complain about it, I really like the concept of Steam. There isn’t any rummaging through various B+M stores looking to see if they have what you want. There isn’t any annoying packaging and CD to insert everytime you want to play. There isn’t any CD to lose, either — you just redownload.
I’ve played through a portion of the game already in the past day since I downloaded it and so far, it’s been great. It’s very cinematic and the battles seem so out of control. A lot of the time I feel so helpless with stuff blowing up all over the place and bullets screaming by. At the same time, though, the game depends on you to get stuff done. The other soldiers you’re with won’t advance until you do, so you do have to make some kind of progress. If you don’t, they’ll just hang back and the enemies will continuously respawn in the same places. The linear aspect of the game is the only drawback (along with a pretty weak AI), but the action definitely makes it fun. I haven’t played the multiplayer yet, but I heard it’s great, which is one of the reasons I bought the game. With many games, the multiplayer is pretty bland, so I’ll finish the singleplayer and then leave the game to collect dust — four hours of gameplay isn’t really worth $50. But, a good multiplayer that allows hours of fun in addition to good singleplayer allows me to recoup my investment.
I also saw Into the Wild, which prompted me to buy the book. The movie reminded me of a few guys on the team that had a similar attitude as the main character. It would be great just to cut loose and forget about all the nuances of every day life, except this guy really did it. Christopher McCandless graduated college and decided to hitchhike, hop trains, kayak to Mexico, and live in a bus in the Alaskan wilderness. Unfortunately, he took it a little too far and starved to death. It seemed that he didn’t have much knowhow in terms of wilderness survival, or that maybe he wanted it to go that way. The movie (and maybe the book) got me thinking about what it would be like if I just up and left without telling anyone. To disappear into the great beyond with no real destination in mind. Forget sleeping in the same bed every day, going through the same old routine, going to class, eating the same bland food, and seeing the same things. Every day would bring something new and exciting. Of course, it wouldn’t be any walk in the park — things that I normally take for granted would suddenly become a huge problem, mainly food, shelter, and just general health kind of stuff.
The Colonial Relays were this weekend and I caught a little bit of the meet. A few of the guys who recently graduated came back and it was nice to see them. Most, like myself, are still in school, just somewhere else. It’s funny how removed I feel from practicing and competing despite still running every day from the locker room and seeing everybody that’s still here. At this point it’s difficult to imagine racing. Just running is an accomplishment at this point.
The semester is coming to a quick end — only 3 weeks and two labs left to TA. Hopefully I’ll finish everything successfully.
I once read
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on February 19, 2008
that one way to become more successful is to use your mind like a knife in order to slice through all the BS. And the BS is really piling up, making my knife rather dull. It’s getting tough to see what really matters.
Since my knee and especially IT band gave out, I haven’t been able to run. I did try a few days last week but after a mile or so the area on the outside of my knee was burning. However, I was able to use the elliptical with success, so I’ve been doing that. It’s pretty boring though, but sure beats doing nothing. I really don’t have time to be hurt right now. Injuries require a lot more time and patience than when I’m healthy, but since my racing plans were canned, I’m not sure how much it all matters. I just want to be able to run again and ultimately be able to train and race like I used to, but it seems that school has really become the dominant factor in my current life.
Suddenly the next two weeks are packed with irritating meetings. Meetings are never productive. Some fool in the department schedules all the new faculty interviews at 8 AM instead of the usual 3 PM or later. There are three of them within the next week and the grad students have to go to all of them. Yuck. It’s funny because last year when this happened even the professors were falling asleep. I’ve also got a second meeting with my adviser and some guy from Hong Kong immediately after one of the faculty interviews on Friday. We can only meet in the mornings since there is a 13 hour time difference between here and Hong Kong. And of course I also have my four hour lab sessions, so all this stuff eats in to time I could be spending on doing actual work.
Since my schedule has been so weird, I’ve been a lot more tired than usual, despite sleeping nearly 9 hours every night. I’ve started to pick up a caffeine/energy drink addiction. The store in the UC sells a bunch of them and I started picking them up from there occasionally, until I ordered a whole case of Rockstar online since one of their low sugar versions had more caffeine per ounce than most others. I’m not really a fan of sugary drinks. Initially I was only drinking them on Thursdays when I got up real early to run, but now I’ve been drinking several a week. At first I got a real rush from the caffeine and was nearly bouncing off the walls during the labs, but now it isn’t as pronounced. Looking online, it seems one can get an addiction after mere days of caffeine consumption. Overall, it does seem to help my mood in the early afternoon when I’m the most tired, but I do notice I have trouble sleeping sometimes. It’s been more of an experiment than anything else and as of right now the results are pretty inconclusive.
As of right now it looks like I’ll be in the gradplex again next year, despite my best efforts to escape. One of the guys in the department didn’t have a roommate for next year and wanted to stay there again, so I’ll probably be rooming with him. He seems like someone who would be a solid roommate and already lives above me, so I’m hoping it will work out. As expensive as the gradplex is, including summer costs, it will still be about 1/3 less than an apartment on my own. Plus, it’s closer to school than the other places I’ve found and is also part of the bus route. At this rate, I might even get sucked back in to getting a meal plan next year.
The Board of Visitors decided to give the school president the boot last week. There’s been a lot of back and forth over this and hopefully it’s come to an end. Regardless of the where I stand on the issues that caused this, I don’t really see Nichol as a good leader. He has been very indecisive when facing several major issues, mainly just going with the flow of things instead of taking a stand. When people complained about the cross in the Wren building being offensive, he removed it. When alumni withheld major donations and protested the cross removal, he put it back (under a BOV compromise). When the NCAA said we had to get rid of our feathered logo, instead of fighting it, he just let it go and paid some firm big bucks to design our new Word Art/Kid Pix logo. With these issues being the most prominent as well as several others, two very polarized sides formed over supporting/removing the president. Ultimately the BOV has control and decided to get rid of him. Giving Nichol the boot is probably the only way to get both sides to be quiet and for the entire school to move on. Otherwise, it will just continue and every future decision made by Nichol will be heavily criticized by one of the parties. The whole thing has become way more of a mess than it needed to be. Several legislators in the state government have even claimed our school has made a mockery of itself with this whole ordeal.
I did get to go home and vote last week since my absentee ballot never came. Ron Paul FTL! I’ve heard too many people compare McCain’s policy to a third Bush term, which I really don’t want. I could have voted for one of the oddball Democratic candidates that were still on the ballot in an attempt to screw up the Clinton/Obama feud, but I chose not to. Still, I like being able to go home more often than I used to, but I have a feeling that will become more difficult as the meetings and other crap are piled on. Since I seem to be running in quicksand, my adviser pretty much acknowledged today that I wouldn’t get my Master’s project done in time, but he did seem satisfied with my progress. Again, it won’t matter too much since I’ll still be in school and around this summer anyways, but getting my Master’s degree was (and still is) one of my biggest priorities.
That’s about how things stand right now — it seems there are more setbacks, hurdles, and needless pressure than actual progress in my life. I’m hoping a lot of this will get cleared up and I can actually get somewhere in the next few months.
Weird
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on February 4, 2008
School is definitely weird so far. It isn’t like I’m used to. I decided to go home again this past weekend since I didn’t have any pressing reason to stay in Williamsburg. I came back Friday afternoon and ran at Seashore on the way back. Good thing I went then, because the weather was warm and an hour later the whole area was covered in torrents of rain.
So I managed to get some work done and see Sarah and watch the Super Bowl. The game had a good finish and was very surprising. I really don’t watch sports very much but I can get somewhat interested if the game is evenly matched. It’s funny that way because when I was racing on a regular basis, I never wanted an even match. I would always prefer to blow everyone away in the first half of the race than let it come down to a kick where I would almost surely lose. Thinking about racing makes me realize how much has changed in the past year or so.
I would like to be able to train regularly and race again and I was planning on doing the Colonal Half and the Shamrock Marathon in March but my body seemed to give out once I hit about 70 miles a week a few weeks ago. I got a bad calf strain and put up with that for a week until my knee (almost literally) blew up last weekend. It’s like I just can’t handle it right now. So I’ve been taking it easy and waiting for things to calm down. I’ve been gradually feeling better every day.
I was planning on going back to school early this afternoon but then my class was canceled so I’ll probably just go back after dinner tonight. I have these really long weekends now without regular class on Friday and on Monday I don’t have class until 3. Everything is crammed into three and a half days, with Thursday being really bad with the back to back lab sessions. This week it’s just as well that my Monday class was canceled because now I’ve got a colloquium speaker on Friday that I’ve got to go to.
The labs have been strange too. I’m now on the other side of the equation, being the instructor instead of the student. I’ve got to help everyone out in the class and deal with people demanding make ups since they were sick. It seems that there are about three kinds of student in the lab. First, there are those who do the work and can figure out everything on their own. They go to class and read the book and know what to do in the lab without help. They might ask the occasional question, but they get in the lab, do the work, and get out. Then, there are those who try really hard but have a lot of problems. They probably go to class regularly and read the stuff they are supposed to, but they aren’t a good match for the material. Students like these are the reason I am in the lab: they need someone to help them out. I want them to do well so I do the best I can to answer all their questions without actually doing the lab for them. Lastly, there are a few students who don’t seem to care. They definitely don’t pay attention in class and get hung up on things that were definitely covered by the professor. Sometimes they ask for help, but there is only so much I can do to push them in the right direction since they don’t really take an interest in the material.
It’s also weird having this adviser-student relationship with my PhD adviser. I meet with him after his class on Tuesdays. It’s like having my own personal professor, actually it is since I am his only advisee. There are papers I have to read and reports I have to give for each meeting on the particular problem I am working on – routing and dissemination in mobile sensor networks. It’s interesting since there is no syllabus and no material that I have to learn. It’s what I can find out on my own by scouring conference proceedings and journals. To that end, it’s also hard to stay motivated because right now the goals for my project aren’t very clearly defined. I’m hoping we can clear that up tomorrow and get some kind of plan in motion with details as to what exactly I will do. Some of the stuff may be hard to actually implement, which is one reason I would prefer a more rigid plan. At this point it’s highly unlikely that I’ll finish by the end of March, but who knows. I’ve got a pretty good idea of the related work and state of the art at this point which will shape my approach to the dissemination problem, but will I be able to solve it in time, implement or simulate the solution, and write a paper on it? I don’t know.
The weather has definitely taken a turn for the better as of late and it’s even supposed to be near 70 tomorrow. It makes things a lot more enjoyable when it’s somewhat warm and the sun is out. I’ve noticed the sun is really staying in the sky longer in the evenings which also helps.
I hadn’t planned on voting in the primary next week but now with everything so close in the polls on both sides I sent in my absentee ballot application today. If it gets to the registrar’s office by tomorrow (it should), then I’ll be able to vote. Of course, I can only vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary. Even though I’m a registered Republican, Virginia allows you to vote in whichever election you choose. I could vote in the Democratic primary to screw things up, but I decided to go Republican since I like Ron Paul the best. I think Ron Paul would return us to a more isolationist pre-World War I foreign policy. All this international intervention seems to be why the world dislikes us so much. As for domestic policy, he will definitely get the government’s grubby little hands out of everyone’s personal affairs (no more Patriot Act, illegal wiretapping, and national ID cards). McCain is okay and he would probably be my second choice out of the remaining Republican contenders. However, I don’t like Obama or Clinton on the Democratic side. Clinton is well versed and would probably do a halfway decent job, but it’s time we get someone else other than a Bush or Clinton in office. If elected to two terms, it will be 36 years before someone other than a Bush or Clinton was in the Executive Branch. I thought that short term presidencies and elections were the whole reason to remove dynasties and ruling classes such as these. Obama doesn’t seem experienced enough to be the President, either. He made a lot of weird comments on foreign policy early on in his campaign and I don’t think he would do a very good job in the international scene if elected.
So, that’s about where everything stands right now. I’ll try to tackle some more work this afternoon and then drive back tonight. A stop at Trader Joe’s in Newport News may be in order, but I’ll have to leave early enough.
No motivation
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on December 31, 2007
I seem to go through phases where I either work like a dog to get stuff done or I don’t feel like doing anything at all. I really don’t feel like doing much now. Maybe I’m trying to recover from the work I did this past semester, but this past semester was probably the least stressful as of late. It’s just there are things I would like to get done but I just can’t bring myself to do them. However, if I don’t get them done, I don’t get paid (for my job), and I won’t get my degree (for school). Fear is a great motivator. It worked a lot with racing when I was too scared to run poorly or lose to someone. I’ll be back at full strength soon.
Progress on stuff for my job has been steady and I have been getting done what my supervisor wants me to, but I feel I could work at a much faster pace if I wanted to. The same goes for my masters project where I have to set up a CAD drawing of a rocket so that it can be fed into a mesh generator. I’ve read some manuals and done some of the tutorials, but there is still a lot more to learn before I really understand. The rocket grid/mesh I have to work with is way more complex than the simpler tutorial examples and I want to understand how to get the grid ready for meshing before I head back to school. I really don’t want to run out of time. I may be a lab TA or grader next semester so that may eat into my time even more.
Somehow I managed a 4.0 again this semester. I’m not sure how that happened, but I did it and it will give me some leeway this coming semester if I plan to continue as a PhD. I’ll still be able to get a B in one class and a B+ in the other to maintain a 3.7 average in seven classes. Hopefully that won’t be the case, but I can do it and still get away with it (I think). There are so many rules and committees and stuff that you have to get through so the requirements are much more than objective and straightforward. Regardless, it’s going to be tough going.
This was probably the most un-Christmas-like Christmas ever. We had no tree, no decorations, almost no presents, and we weren’t even home. It seems each year we do less and less. When I was in elementary school we put up the tree shortly after Thanksgiving and tons of decorations. It was a big and exciting event each time. We would put up an extensive O-gauge railroad around the tree too. This would usually involve a trip to this giant model train store in Suffolk or Portsmouth to get new cars and track. My mom would also make a zillion different kinds of Christmas cookies. Christmas day would also be a huge deal too and it seemed that there were always piles of presents. There was always a particular Lego set that I wanted and I would spend all day putting it together and playing with it.
Then, as each year went by, the excitement seemed to decrease. Along with it, the train set disappeared, along with fewer decorations and not as many cookies. I guess this year just bottomed out completely with no tree at all. The past few years we did get a real tree instead of an artificial, but we would wait until the last minute to get one, sometimes even on Christmas Eve, when you could get an unwanted tree in the gutter for free. It doesn’t really matter as much to me anymore and the enjoyment is more centered around being at home rather than school and seeing my family, which I don’t get to that often while I am at school.
This year we went to Tampa since we had family that moved to the area and my grandparents were also visiting them. It was weird since my aunt on my mom’s side just moved there and an uncle on my dad’s side had moved there as well. That was a strange coincidence. We wound up splitting the time between both places, which made for a fair amount of driving since my uncle lived out in the middle of nowhere. The weather was warm and it was nice to see some family I hadn’t seen in awhile. It seems that nearly every neighborhood in the area was gated with a guard shack, which was weird. All the surrounding roads have no shoulders, no sidewalks, and tons of cars, making running a pain. Fortunately, my uncle’s neighborhood was big enough I could get most of my runs done within the entire “compound”. The warm weather made things more enjoyable.
I didn’t really do all that much during the four days that we were in Florida, mainly just hanging out in the backyard of my aunt’s or uncle’s place since it was so nice. The first day was just spent recovering from the trip since we got up at 4AM for the flight. It took me nearly two whole days to feel normal again from that. One day we took a road trip around the area and went across the Sunshine Skyway bridge and ate lunch at a brewpub in Ybor City. I shared a beer sampler with my uncle and got this massive smoked salmon sandwich which was excellent. Since I don’t drink that much it was also the first time I had several different beers at the same time (with the sampler) and was surprised to find that I liked the lighter ales and lagers more than the stouts and porters. Of course these were all brewed by the same place, so others may be better, but it was still interesting because until then, most stuff tasted the same when taken by itself.
We also went to an Indian casino and flushed about $150 down the toilet at the slot machines. I don’t know why we went there, it was the biggest waste I’ve ever seen.
The trip back was much better than the way out since I convinced my dad to leave later than 3AM (which is what he wanted to do). We left at a more sane 12 hours later and got home that night. I got dinner at this barbecue place in the Charlotte airport which was still serving the same fried pickles with every meal that I had a couple years ago. Pickles seem like a weird thing to fry.
I’ve been slowly starting back up for a winter/spring training cycle but have been feeling really tight as of late. Maybe I’m just not used to doing what I did for the past five years. I remember Keith saying something over the summer that after four or five years of competing and training at a high level that something is going to give. Some people are better adapted to it than others and are probably able to hang on for longer, but sooner or later your body wants a break. I’ve had some knee thing going on for the past two years and I almost feel that it might be damaged permanently in some way. Some days are much better than others so I try to go how I feel. That seems to work better than forcing through every workout or race regardless of how I feel.
That’s about the highlight of my break so far. Now I have two weeks to get some stuff done before school starts again. I have a feeling some big changes are in store for the future and I’ve got to do my best to ensure they turn out well.
Mt. Diablo
On Sunday I drove to the top of Mt. Diablo, near Walnut Creek. I’ve seen the mountain looming in the background on nearly all my visits to the area and looked it up on the internet to see what it was. It took over an hour to get to the state park, but then another 30-45 minutes to drive a narrow, twisting road to the summit. The summit road had lots of cool views and I took some pictures. There were plenty of cyclists suffering up the hill (and flying down it). I saw a few people running, too, which surprised me.
At the top, I could see everything. To the east was the Central Valley with the Sierra Nevada on the horizon. To the north, I could see Suisun Bay and the Sacramento River. In the distance, Mt. Lassen was barely visible, the southernmost volcano in the Cascades. The entire Bay Area was visible to the west, but much of it was covered in fog. The skyline of San Francisco just barely stuck out of the fog, along with the Golden Gate.
That was a pretty cool trip. I spent a fair amount of time walking around the summit and taking pictures. It was like being on an airplane with the views.
On Saturday I did a loop around the Palo Alto Baylands for my long run. I had been there before, but turned around instead of doing a loop. This time I went farther and came back along 101 instead of retracing my steps. One of the best things about this area is that there are so many good places to run, just right out the door. Then, of course, there are all the parks in the Santa Cruz mountains. If you took all the parks I’ve been to in Eastern Virginia and combined them into one, they still wouldn’t be as cool as one of the open space preserves in and around the Santa Cruz.
I’ve also watched a few movies lately. I saw Zodiac, which I was surprised I hadn’t heard of before. I was really impressed by it, but the ending was a bit anti-climactic. It was also kind of weird because it took place in the SF Bay Area. It seems most movies I see are set in a place I have little connection to, so the setting made it a little more meaningful.
I also saw The Prestige. This was really good. I had wanted to see this for a while and finally got my chance. The ending was excellent and almost completely unexpected. Spoiler: I had an idea of what would happen, but the reveal of the true “good” and “bad” magician really blew me away.
The whole food thing is working out well, but is starting to encroach on my free time. Planning what I am going to make and especially going to the grocery store is wearing on me. Each week it becomes a pain to figure out what I can make that is relatively easy, since I don’t feel like doing much after work. The weekends don’t matter as much, so I can afford to spend more time. However, going to the store takes awhile and sometimes I wind up going to several places since not every store has all the stuff I want. Of course, I usually forget something and then have to go back again to get it.
This weekend I did a stir fry with shrimp and rice, which turned out great. I made another peanut butter pie, this time with cream cheese and a chocolate crust. It’s kept in the freezer and with the cream cheese tastes like a cheesecake/ice cream combo. It’s also really dense despite using low fat ingredients. At this point I’m pretty confident I’ll just get a minimal meal plan and eat most of my dinners in the caf. All the overhead of going to the store and planning things out would be a real pain while at school. It might work out better if I had a roommate that I could switch off cooking with. That way I also wouldn’t make something that would last for three days.
I’m pretty much getting done what everyone at work has given me to do. My visualization tool has been integrated into the Composer IDE and now I’m just adding more features. The work isn’t terribly challenging, but it’s much better than the previous summers.
Dan called to tell me he should be in Echo Lake on Saturday afternoon on his way up the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s a four hour drive from here, so I thought about going to see him, but it’s hard to tell if he would be there by then. Yesterday was the last time he could call before the weekend. I don’t want to go all the way out there only to miss him. There are some friends in Davis that I will probably go see instead.
My mom was planning on driving back with me and was just talking about going back the same way I drove out. I don’t know if I want to do that. It might be interesting to go the southern route since it’s something new. I’ll get to go to three new states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. It’s pretty much Interstate 40 from California to Tennessee. It would probably be hot and consist of a lot more boring plains and deserts, so I’m kind of unsure on the issue. I’m also not too keen of another endless drive through Nebraska. There’s still a few more weeks to decide, but not too many.
Week Three
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on June 22, 2007
It’s been four weeks since I’ve left home and three since I’ve started my job. Everything has settled into a routine at this point. Mostly, it isn’t that much different than previous summers. I get up, run, eat something, go to work. I do some work and go to some meetings and then go home. I eat dinner and by that point I’m pretty much beat, so I either watch TV, read, or screw around on the internet until I go to bed.
The whole place reminds me of being at school. The lodge isn’t that much different than the dorms, with everyone running around being loud and then staring in your window as they walk by. There’s the usual mob of grounds keeping workers weed-whacking grass in my face every morning as I run by. There’s the dumpster truck that comes at 3 AM (I’m not kidding) and slams the dumpster into the concrete ten times right outside my door.
The whole food thing is what really sets this apart. There is a cafeteria at Ames, but it’s only open for lunch. I haven’t been there, but I heard it’s just regular cafeteria food and it isn’t exactly cheap, either. I’ve also heard they have beer there, which is weird. I remember discussing one day at school if the school cafeterias had beer alongside the soda fountains. Google, I’ve heard, has an excellent cafeteria that is open all day and is free. Too bad I don’t work there. I run by there in the morning sometimes and I can smell their food cooking.
I started off eating a lot of canned and frozen stuff, but most of it is too much and I have to eat the same thing for two days in a row. I’ve tried mixing in some fresh stuff, which makes things more tolerable. The stoves in the kitchen don’t get hot enough to bring water to a rolling boil, so it took forever to make pasta one night. I made a steak one night this week which was good and I also got some fresh peaches from the grocery store. The peaches have probably been the best thing I’ve eaten in the past four weeks. I’ll probably get some more fresh fruit this weekend and maybe some fresh seafood or something. I also had some barbecue pork that was in the refrigerated section and a baked potato I nuked up in the microwave. If I had a full kitchen in my room like at school, it wouldn’t be bad at all. Especially if the stove worked correctly. So far I’ve been well under my $100/week estimate for food. At school, the regular meal plan basically works out to $100/week, so if I don’t get a meal plan next year I can definitely save money.
Last weekend I went to Huddart County Park, since I had heard so many good things about it from Keith and a few other guys on the team who had run there after racing at Stanford. It was a good 20 minute drive from Moffett. As soon as I got off 280, I recognized where I was. The park was only a mile or so from where I had done a long run with some of the Nike farm team guys last year. We didn’t make it into the park, though, and it was probably a good idea we didn’t. I knew it was going to be tough with the mountains, but it was much worse than I expected.
My goal was to make it to the top of the mountains and then run along Skyline Blvd and then come back. It’s what I did, but my watch told me I did just under 12 miles in an hour and a half. After looking at some maps I picked the longest trail to the top since the park wasn’t that big, but the trail ended up being some kind of horse trail with more poop on it than I’ve ever seen in Colonial Williamsburg. As is the case with horse poop on trails, there is always tons of it but never any horses. Anyways, the trail I decided to take went straight up the mountain. No switchbacks or anything. It was steeper than a staircase in parts. Occasionally, a trail would branch off to the side and I would take that for some relief, since the side trails mostly traversed the mountain and had switchbacks as they climbed. It was only about two or three miles from the start to the top but I think it took me almost 30 minutes. It was insane. The temperature also went from about 70 and sun at the base to about 50 at the summit with fog and rain. I found a long trail that went along the ridge of the mountains, took that for awhile, and then came back on the other side of the park.
Going back down was even worse than going up. Each step I took was about a three or four inch drop. The trail I took back down went straight down just as the other one went up. With each step, my insides mushed against each other and after a few minutes, my guts were killing me. I nearly fell a few times, so I just walked down at one point until I saw a road. Then I took the road back to the entrance where the car was. There were a lot of suffering cyclists heading up the road as I went down.
The park was a lot different than anything I’ve experienced at home. I don’t think I’ve been on any terrain like that on a run. Even some of the stuff I’ve done in western VA doesn’t compare to that. I was thinking of going to another park nearby this weekend, but I’ll probably hold off on that since my quad has been killing me this week thanks to all the mountain climbing. I do notice the talent pool of people here is greater. There was a guy last week that kept up with me for awhile, and then this week there was someone else. Heading back to Moffett I passed some guy at a light who turned the last quarter mile over the 101 into a near sprint. I’m not sure why he was going where I was, since once you cross over the 101 you can only go into Moffett. I didn’t hear him anymore when I got close to the checkpoint and must have turned around. I should probably start doing some light workouts, maybe next week, so that I won’t have too much trouble running with everyone in the fall.
Work hasn’t been too bad but there is still a lot to learn. A lot of the meetings and teleconferences I go to are a bit over my head. It was like this before when I started at BMH, but eventually I picked up on everything. It’s all stuff that doesn’t apply to me directly. The work on the simulation visualization module has progressed well, but I’m really only prototyping at this point until everyone has more defined requirements.
Last night I was on the internet and stumbled on to something I had long forgotten about: ham radio. My grandfather was big into ham radio and I know that both my parents had licenses for a time. It sounds like something that would be interesting to get into. There are three classes of license, all of which have separate multiple choice exams that don’t cost that much. They don’t require morse code either. The only downside is that the equipment can be expensive, much like photography. It seems that since the advent of the internet, ham radio has fallen by the wayside, but it would still be cool to be able to talk with people all over the world.
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