Posts Tagged tests
One reason grad school is different
My sister (and others) have been complaining about the gobs of work they’ve got to get done during exam period. There are papers, projects, and of course, exams. My case is somewhat different. I remember how it seemed all kinds of massive projects and papers were due right before or during exams, and then I would have to suffer through a whole ton of exams. It was a huge weight off my back when it was done.
But now, it’s almost worse. I started working on my current project in September, right after my knee surgery. It’s been going for nine months and now I am finally cramming all of those nine months into ten pages or less, double column.
To put this in perspective for an undergrad: take all the papers, all the projects, all the homework assignments, and all the exams, tests, and quizzes in the last two semesters and make them all due next week. That is the weight of what I am working on. It nags at me every day that I have been working for so long and have nothing to show for it. I think about it in bed before I go to sleep, I think about it when I wake up, I think about it when I’m in the shower, and I think about it when I’m on the bike. As an undergrad and even for the first part of grad school, I got closure incrementally: with periodic assignments and tests and at the finish of each semester when classes end. Closure is now when I get a paper out, and the time span for that seems indefinite.
My first project and paper was faster — it took a semester and a summer. However, I’m still dealing with that project now — I’m going to present it at SECON and when I do, it will almost be a year since the first version of the paper went out.
It seems most undergrads treat papers lightly: “Oh, I can crank out a ten page paper in a few hours and still get an A…” I was the same way — it was spit something out as fast as possible to get it over with, but put enough effort into it to get a decent grade. Now, papers are everything. The paper is how everyone else sees your work. I may have spent the past nine months creating something that could have huge implications for the future of wireless sensor networks, but nobody but my adviser would know about it unless I tell them in a paper. The reviewers will lay the smack down on you if you try to whip out a paper in a matter of hours. Yesterday, I spent six hours writing and got out about five paragraphs. They were five critical paragraphs about the core of what I did, and they had better be comprehensive and understandable from the perspective of an outsider.
I find it hard to tell the story of my project, but I think the difficulty is from inexperience. There are key things that reviewers look for that I must give special attention in addressing. Because of this, there is a pretty rigid way to write a research paper, but even then I find it difficult. It is hard to convey specific algorithmic details, yet be concise and easy to understand. I have to remember the main selling points of my work and refer back to them throughout the paper. For these projects, I find the initial problem discovery, solution design, and implementation to be interesting and sometimes even fun. Enough experience programming and thinking about solutions to problems has helped with that, but I haven’t done much writing.
With time, I imagine writing will get easier. I will know exactly what to do. With my current paper, I’m almost there. I’m almost to the point where I feel good about what I have written and know that everything will turn out okay. I just have to keep working and get it done. Then there will be some closure.
Enabling ACKs in TinyOS 2.x
Posted by Matt in development on February 25, 2009
I’ve seen a lot of questions about how to enable ACKs in TinyOS and not too many responses. Unlike a lot of TinyOS problems I’ve had, this one isn’t too bad. Some sample code for enabling ACKs is available in $TOSROOT/apps/tests/cc2420/TestAcks. In your configuration .nc file, just wire the PacketAcknowledgements interface:
implementation {
...
MainC.PacketAcknowledgements -> ActiveMessageC;
}
Then, in your implementation file:
module TestAcksP {
uses {
interface PacketAcknowledgements;
...
Then, just before you call AMSend.send() for a message_t testMsg:
call PacketAcknowledgements.requestAck(&testMsg);
When a packet arrives with an ACK request, the ACK will be sent automatically. In the sender’s AMSend.sendDone(), you will want to make sure the packet was ACKed to determine if a retransmission is required:
if(!call PacketAcknowledgements.wasAcked(&testMsg))
retransmit();
And that’s pretty much it.
Upgrading to TinyOS 2.1
Posted by Matt in development on February 25, 2009
I recently upgraded my TinyOS version from 2.0.2 to 2.1 and discovered that it makes use of Java 6. I was testing my installation and kept getting the following when compling TestSerial:
java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file
Changing my java complier and runtime to Java 6 fixed this problem.
School can be more than an education…
…but academics come first.
Another Flat Hat article got my attention, this time about the difficulties of performing well in school while competing in intercollegiate sports. The author, a student-athlete, states that here at William and Mary, a divide exists between athletes and non-athletes. From my experience and the author’s, this divide seems to exist for two reasons.
The first reason is that due to time constraints between school and practice/traveling for competition, athletes self-segregate from other students. Going to class, practice, and doing homework consumed all my (and my teammates’) time and energy, leaving almost no time for any kind of social life. What little free time we had was spent with our roommates, who were also teammates. Living, studying, sleeping, eating, traveling, suffering through workouts, and showering with 40 other guys was enough of a social activity that we didn’t need anyone else. In fact, very few of us had friends or even girlfriends who were not on the team. Anyone who hung out with other non-teammate friends was seen as the odd one out.
Those who wanted to do well in races and in school didn’t do much else except practice and study. If you tried to squeeze in late night parties every week, your performances in school and running suffered. I’ve seen this happen to several teammates, who tried going out on weekends only to bomb tests and races. Anyone who wanted to compete effectively without hurting their grades had to make some sacrifices. Consequently, a lot of non-athletes see us as weird. My sister says my teammates stick out in the already nerdy William and Mary population like a sore thumb: “they’re skinny, don’t drink, have a shaved head…”
Since high school, my coaches have always said that we are students first and athletes second. If school is taking a hit, we should back off on the running. For me, it never came to that, but a few teammates during my five years of eligibility did quit the team citing academics. Nearly everyone on the team set high standards for themselves academically, and few failed to hit these standards. Almost everyone on the team that’s graduated since I’ve been here has gone on to graduate school of some sort, many to law or medical school. There aren’t many student-athletes at William and Mary that I’ve met that haven’t done well academically, but this high level of academic performance seems to be the exception, rather than the norm.
At other schools, student-athletes really do seem to live up to the “dumb jock on scholarship” stereotype. USA Today reported on how nearly all student-athletes on DI football and basketball teams major in the same discipline, usually something like “social sciences,” or “management.” They pick the easy way out to keep their grades high enough to compete and somehow many of them still fail to graduate. This is where NCAA policy should really push towards getting a useful degree not just “majoring in eligibility.” Those that do graduate “have been hesitant to cite their degree on job applications,” since their major was worthless.
The thought of incompetent athletes flunking out of the easiest classes really hits a nerve with the average William and Mary student, who most likely busts his or her butt to get through Organic Chemistry. Odds are that student’s classmates are also members of the basketball, tennis, track, and football teams, among others. William and Mary boasts a nearly 100 percent graduation rate with all of its teams and 36 Academic All-Americans since 1992.
Money is the second reason for the athlete and non-athlete divide. In the comments section of the article, a lot of students believe that the teams at William and Mary get their budgets and athletic scholarships entirely from the $1,259 per year athletic fee tacked on to tuition. They feel cheated that their tuition money is going to pay for others’ athletic scholarships. This is hardly the case. All athletic scholarships are funded from endowments and alumni donations, not from tuition. Without a strong alumni base, the athletic programs would be nonexistent. One commenter mused that he wasn’t able to use the athletic fields or run on the new track because priority went to athletic teams. Again, those fields and the new track were paid entirely by alumni donations, which specified their use for athletics. With respect with complaints about the athletic fee in general, there are plenty of fees that I pay in my tuition that go towards school programs that I never took advantage of. There are also plenty of government programs that I pay for in my taxes that I never use, either.
To me, non-athletes complain about athletic scholarships in the same manner that out-of-state students complain about in-state tuition. Out-of-state students had a choice to attend a public school in their own state and pay less money, but they didn’t (they also don’t pay VA state tax). Non-athletes had a choice to work hard in a sport in high school and potentially get an athletic scholarship, but they didn’t. As for athletic slotting, plenty of non-athletes get accepted in the same manner, but due to their socioeconomic status.
At William and Mary, we have our cake and eat it too. We can be successful students while kicking butt as athletes.
Installing TinyOS 2.x on Ubuntu (with Iris support)
Posted by Matt in development on November 11, 2008
Since upgrading my Ubuntu installation, I got plenty of compile warnings when compiling TinyOS applications. To fix this, I just decided to reinstall TinyOS. It can be a pain to install and each time I do it, I’ve got to look for resources on the internet and try a couple different things to get it working. I’ll try to keep this updated whenever I discover something new or have to upgrade or reinstall TinyOS again. Here are the references I found to help me compile this:
All Platforms:
Installing TinyOS 2.0.2
Ubuntu:
5 Second Fuse – TinyOS Installation
Install TinyOS-2.x On Ubuntu << Udin Harun
I also got it running on my Leopard Macbook using this:
Installing TinyOS 2.x on Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard)
This worked for me on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. I did have a previous install of TinyOS that I removed, but some stuff may have been left behind.
1. Add the following line to /etc/apt/source.list:
deb http://tinyos.stanford.edu/tinyos/dists/ubuntu hardy main
Currently, there isn’t any repository for Intrepid Ibex, but this seems to work fine.
2. Update the repository cache from a terminal window:
$sudo apt-get update
3. Install TinyOS packages:
sudo apt-get install tinyos tinyos-avr tinyos-msp430 nesc tinyos-tools
In my case, “tinyos” caused a warning since it was an abstraction for several packages. I installed “tinyos-2.0.2″.
3a. (Iris Support): Install TinyOS from CVS:
I also wished to have the latest TinyOS version from CVS since it seems those provided via the Stanford repository did not support the Iris mote. To install from CVS, open a terminal window to the installation directory of your choice and run the following:
$cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos login
$cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos co tinyos-2.x
$cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos co tinyos-2.x-contrib
tinyos-2.x-contrib is a library of user-contributed code that can help in designing your own applications. If you installed as su, you may want to change the permissions of your tinyos-2.x directory if you wish to compile anything in the apps directory or modify any TinyOS code:
$chown -R <uid> tinyos-2.x
4. Add the following environment variables to ~/.bashrc:
export TOSROOT=/opt/tinyos-2.x
export TOSDIR=$TOSROOT/tos
export CLASSPATH=$TOSROOT/support/sdk/java/tinyos.jar:.
export MAKERULES=$TOSROOT/support/make/Makerules
export PATH=/opt/msp430/bin:$PATH
Depending on the directory and version you have installed, you may need to change TOSROOT to reflect the correct directory.
5. Install TinyOS Java Toolset:
I had issues with this one: you may not have to do this step if you just use the tinyos package provided by the Stanford repository. However, I installed via CVS and had to install the TinyOS Java toolset manually. Ensure that you have performed Step 4 and modified your .bashrc file before proceeding.
First, from the terminal, run:
$sudo tos-install-jni
This will install the Java Toolset into your Java directory. For some reason I had Java 1.5 (5.0), Java 1.6 (6.0), and OpenJDK installed on Ubuntu. Oddly, javac pointed to Java 1.5 and the java command pointed to OpenJDK, which was causing errors when running TinyOS Java apps like TestSerial. To fix this, I removed Java 1.6 and OpenJDK since these seemed to be causing nothing but problems and just about everything runs on 1.4 or 1.5 (including TinyOS Java libraries). Now java and javac point to Java 1.5 (Hopefully doing this didn’t toast some other application).
You can then compile the TinyOS Java libraries by running the following in the terminal:
$cd $TOSROOT/support/sdk/java
$make
6. Install Graphviz
This step seems to be optional, but you need it if you want to run the Oscilloscope application. In a terminal, run:
$sudo apt-get install graphviz
TinyOS wants an old version of Graphviz, but Oscilloscope seems to run fine.
7. Check your TinyOS Installation:
From a terminal, run:
$tos-check-env
Running this, I have received errors about the Graphviz version, but the Oscilloscope application runs fine with the newer version.
To test your installation with Telos-based motes, try:
$cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/apps/Blink
$make telosb install.0 bsl,/dev/ttyUSB0
To test with Iris motes, try:
$cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/apps/Blink
$make iris install.0 mib510,/dev/ttyUSB0
To test the serial connection with Telos-based motes, try:
$cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/apps/tests/TestSerial
$make telosb install.0 bsl,/dev/ttyUSB0
$java TestSerial -comm serial@/dev/ttyUSB0:telos
To test the serial connection with Iris-based motes, try:
$cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/apps/tests/TestSerial
$make iris install.0 mib510,/dev/ttyUSB0
$java TestSerial -comm serial@/dev/ttyUSB1:iris
It seems that with the Iris, applications must be installed via the mib510 board (ttyUSB0) and data can be retrieved by accessing the mote itself (ttyUSB1).
7. Issues
In addition to the Graphviz errors, for some reason the motelist command does not see the mib510 interface board or the Iris. However, when I install to /dev/ttyUSB0 or listen to /dev/ttyUSB1, the installation works fine. motelist does recognize the Iris on OS X, however.
The Culture of Laziness
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on October 30, 2008
This is my sentiment exactly.
With most Americans unable to recite basic history and civics (even after college!), it’s no surprise that I’m a tiny minority in a sea of foreign graduate students. The average American just doesn’t want to put in their best effort and try to be successful on a personal/community/national scale.
The article refers to IQ tests being cut in the 60s because nobody wants to be labeled as "below average". Today, colleges are eliminating the SAT requirement and some are even refusing to be ranked in US News. We can’t compare people anymore, for it’s "too unfair". There are even the rumors about elementary schools banning tag because it’s "too competitive".
You can see the result of this anti-competitiveness today. Everyone gets in to college and they don’t learn a thing when they leave. There isn’t any incentive to do well since the end result is the same no matter the effort. Even the law student at the bottom of his class graduates and may go on to be a district court judge (that’s a scary thought).
The issues aren’t the reason I don’t want Obama to win, it’s the attitude. The attitude of entitlement and laziness, the attitude that an Obama administration will magically take care of everyone without individuals having to lift a finger. Even Michael Moore calls it the "Slacker Uprising". Nobody wants to put in the effort to compete or accomplish anything and we are witnessing a huge shift as what little remaining cash, manpower, and brainpower flows out of this country and into others. With tax policies that increase as income increases, there’s no incentive to save or invest money — just spend it. With talk of legislation and funding to "rescue" those who default on their mortgages, there’s no incentive to pay your bills. When individuals get punished for being responsible, there isn’t any reason for them to continue.
The rewards must end for those who do nothing. Instead, help should go to those who do something. Bring back the competitive drive. Bring back the effort and creative thinking that brought us the moon landings, the Empire State Building, and the Eisenhower Interstate System. Start learning stuff in college that will be useful for the good of yourself and everyone else so accomplishments like this will happen again.
Until then, we continue to flush ourselves down the toilet.
One week down, many to go
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on August 25, 2008
I’ve now been stuck in this brace and on crutches for over a week. So far it hasn’t been too bad, but it’s real difficult to do a lot of things that I took for granted before. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to get along at school by myself — I can’t carry anything but a backpack and it’s a real chore to shower and to get food by myself. I’m hoping that I’ll become more adjusted to this and be faster — it takes me an hour to get ready in the morning compared to about 15 minutes before. I’ll see how things go on my own on Thursday and into Friday when I have to go back to have the stitches removed. Driving is going to be interesting and hopefully I’ll be able to get my leg in the car with the minimal amount of movement the brace allows.
I started a weight routine for my legs and upper body which is the best I can do since I can’t run or bike. It should help some when I eventually am allowed more range of motion in the brace. The brace has done wonders for my hamstring flexibility though. I have been putting some weight on the left leg since the doctor and PA said I am allowed to, but I stick to the crutches when I move around. I’m real paranoid about screwing up the healing process and knocking out that clot in the knee that’s supposed to form new cartilage. There’s still a few times each day where I’ll move and I can feel the knee pop right in the area where I had the microfracture. I really hope that’s not the kneecap destroying part of the clot that’s in there. I’ll have to ask about that on Thursday.
There really isn’t much else I can do except work on the school project during the day and watch the Olympics at night. The stuff I’m working on still has problems and the conference submission deadline is at the end of the week. Each test case in the experiment takes about 5 hours of CPU time so each time I change something it takes quite awhile until I see results. And there are a lot of test cases, so I need as many as 20 or 30 processors running simultaneously to get results as fast as possible. I used to wonder why there was a need for systems with so many processors, but now I know. Each group of tests also spits out about a gig in raw data which also illustrates the need for a large amount of storage space.
I really hadn’t watched that much of the Olympics before whenever they had it, but I don’t really have that much else to do this time around. I always watched some of the track stuff, but that was about it. Personally, I didn’t think the coverage was all that great since there seemed to be an insane amount of commercials. Also, since there were so many sports, they couldn’t show everything, so the time was broken into small chunks of each. I didn’t get to see some of the stuff that sounded interesting, like the sailing or whitewater rafting stuff, shooting, or the modern pentathlon (which has cross country). There were a lot of things that I didn’t find as interesting, like diving and gymnastics, which seemed to last forever and require a palate akin to a professional wine taster in order to distinguish between a good and bad performance.
With the entire world watching, you would think that all the athletes would be on their best behavior as a representative of their country and as the best in their sport. Despite this, there seemed to be a bit of showboating and poor sportsmanship. One guy in taekwondo kicked a referee in the face after being disqualified. A wrestler threw his medal down on the mat after being angry over a judge’s call. In the qualifying heats of the 4 x 400, Great Britain’s anchor taunted the Jamaican runner behind him as they finished. And of course, there was all the showing off for the camera by Jamaica’s Bolt in the 100 and 200 — this was so bad there is even a YouTube video mocking it. There were many cases in the qualifying heats of the sprints where those in the front would pretty much slow down and walk across the finish line. Before the championship season every year in track, our head coach always said if we did that we’d never be wearing a uniform again. Of course, these instances were probably the exceptions rather than the rule, but it only takes a few bad apples.
Now that the Olympics are over it’s now on to the hype of the conventions and the fall election. I’m getting sick of a lot of it especially since Virginia is considered a “swing” state. There are tons of ads on TV, most of which are really annoying. There are too many attacks on the other guy and not enough emphasis on the good qualities of either candidate.
Maybe by the time all that is over I’ll be back on my feet again and things will be more or less back to normal. Maybe I’ll be crippled for life, but I’m trying to do everything I can to avoid that.
Ow
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on February 10, 2008
Today was the nail in the coffin. Over the past few weeks my body has been coming apart and now it’s finished. It started around the time I went back to school with just general fatigue when running. That grew into a calf strain which canned my workouts. A week later the calf strain had improved but while out one morning my left knee exploded in a loud pop. The pain and swelling reduced over the past two weeks and it’s felt better every day. That was the left knee. I think I started putting more pressure on the other leg since the left one was bothering me which led to the IT band problem I’ve got now. The IT band issue on the right leg started gradually about a week ago but I thought nothing of it until the past few days when it got really bad. Today I felt fine for about five minutes with no pain at all and then – boom – it became unbearable and I just walked back to my room.
Now I’m not sure what to do since I’ve never had an IT band injury before. I have had some soreness in the area previously, but it always moves up my leg over a few days and then goes away. I’ll probably take most of the week off completely and maybe try biking after a few days. I’ve heard that biking can bother the IT band so I don’t know if I’ll be doing that for long. I may be reduced to the pool if I want to do any exercise, but I’ll see. I hate the pool. I’ve heard so many horror stories about people with IT band pain that will never go away. They take months off and feel no pain, but as soon as they run a few minutes it comes right back. My sister had what was probably an IT band injury about the time we went back to school and I’ve seen her running since then, so long term suffering isn’t the case for everyone. I hope that’s not the case with me, but it seems that this is a hard injury to get over. I usually have a higher probability of getting screwed with stuff like this than the average person.
For the past few months I’ve been trying to train as I did in high school and college, but maybe this is the end. Maybe I just can’t do it anymore, but I have a hard time believing that.
The gastroenterologist said I don’t have Celiac disease, which means I can eat all the pasta, bread, and cereal I want without worrying that I’m hurting myself in some way. Not that I was surprised by this, but it’s good to know for sure. The tests indicated iron deficiency, and that was not a surprise. Despite taking a daily iron supplement, the crappy school food just isn’t enough. Their antics have nearly turned me into a vegetarian thanks to their terrible meats. I’m thinking I’ll switch back to cooking my own dinners again starting this summer.
The IBM/Lenovo T61 I ordered through the department came on Friday, which was faster than the original ship date. I’ve only messed around with it a little and took off as much of the crapware as I could. It seems to be a solid machine and weighs a lot less than you would think for its size (which isn’t very big). The Macbook is thinner but about the same dimensions otherwise and seems a fair amount heavier. Right now the new laptop is running XP, but I may install the TinyOS XUbuntu live CD so that I don’t have to screw with installing and configuring TinyOS. Now I’ve got four computers that I have regular access to and each seems suited to only a specific purpose. I wish I had something that did everything well. My Mac is great, but it has a crappy internal graphics card so I can’t play games very well with it. There are a lot of compatibility issues as well (problems with installing parts of TinyOS). My desktop is good for games, but that’s about it since I prefer using Linux/Mac for all my school work. My desktop in the office runs Linux, which is good for most school work, but I don’t have permissions to install any new programs and of course I can’t play any games on that machine, either. The new laptop has a stand alone graphics card but it’s probably not very good (Quadro 140M) and I’m supposed to be using it just for school anyways.
I’ve watched the first two episodes of Lost — the first one sucked but the last one was pretty good. It appears as though the writers are finally making an effort to move the story along. The last season was pretty stagnant. There are only a handful of completed episodes because of the strike, so I hope they are all good. I really don’t have an interest in any other TV shows right now.
I haven’t received my absentee ballot so I guess I won’t be voting in the primary on Tuesday. I would have to mail it by tomorrow for it to get to the registrar in time.
I’ve also looked at apartments for this summer and beyond. I’ve about had it with roommates and living in the graduate complex. These past two years I have had terrible roommates that I either don’t get along with or are complete slobs and leave trash everywhere (or both). On top of that are the maintenance people who seem to have weekly intrusions into the apartment to inspect something. They also drive around the courtyard in their vans like it’s the Daytona 500. Then they get out and bang away all day with saws and hammers and leaf blowers. It’s time to put a stop to that. Unfortunately, the offerings are pretty limited if you want something that’s one bedroom. My other requirement is laundry facilities. No way in heck am I going to a laundromat. So, with those two criteria, I found a few places that seem to start at around $700 – $900 per month. With my meager PhD stipend, I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford that. All of the places aren’t exactly close to campus, either, so I would definitely have to drive in every day, but it isn’t too much different from what I’m doing now.
So the planets have come out of alignment and there is a disturbance in the force. All is not well, but I will have to accept things for what they are and do the best I can until (hopefully) they improve.
Frustration
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on March 7, 2006
I never understood the term “tactical” race.
Personally, I think it’s a strategy for wimps who only care about winning. When I run, it’s less about winning and more about running a fast time and beating the crap out of myself. Basically, the entire field runs slow for 3/4 of the race and then everyone just takes off in the last quarter. Nobody ever runs fast this way, and I despise it.
I qualified for the indoor IC4As in Boston for the fourth consecutive year, but only ran it once before since I was injured the past two years. This was supposed to be the big one. Instead, my coach tells me not to lead for the first 2K (of a 5K race), and because of it, I’m forced to sit in a pack of about 10 guys who are tripping over each other because the pace is so slow. I nearly take out my teammate when I step on his shoe.
Finally I get the OK from my coach to pull out of the pack and get things moving, and I do so until about 3500m in. At this point one of the original leaders who was running slow passes me, and thinking he’s going for it, pull in behind and go with him, only to have him slow down again! The rest of the pack quickly catches up and I’m boxed in yet again. It takes another lap and a half until I can get back out (with the help of my teammate) and pick things up for the second time. Of course there isn’t much time left at this point, and so many guys I would have dropped had I run a fast, evenly paced race are still around. I do my best to hold on, but it’s a losing battle, and run 14:17.7, a new personal record by less than a tenth of a second. I’m glad I ran at least that fast, but it could have been better had I gone out harder like I wanted.
Somehow, I’ve made it this far without getting hurt, and I’m still crossing my fingers that nothing serious will happen.
Last week was a real mess with tests and leaving for Boston. Everything turned out okay, though. We wound up getting single rooms at the Hyatt in Cambridge, which was a really nice hotel. Usually we don’t get single rooms and have to share. I slept like a log both nights I was there. There was some high school leadership thing going on at the hotel, which was annoying with all the high schoolers running around and screaming.
Since we got there so early on Friday, we just sat around the hotel all day and then went for a run later in the afternoon, going by the track and then out along the Charles. It was freezing out, under 30 degrees with howling winds. That night we went to Vinny T’s for dinner, the same chain we had gone to three years before when I was a freshman. The portion sizes were just as big as I remembered, and I could barely put a dent in my veal parmesan. Some of the other guys made it into a contest to eat everything, and needless to say, they were suffering every time the van hit a bump on the way back to the hotel. My coach had gone off to the Reggie Lewis track earlier in the day with Sean, whose brother was running in the New England Championships. They were supposed to meet us for dinner, but got lost and spent two hours driving around Boston. I find it funny that the one guy who lives in Boston (or close to it) gets lost. We also stopped at a Trader Joe’s on the way back from dinner, which was the first time I’ve ever been to one of those. I got some granola from there that was really good. Apparently there is a Trader Joe’s in Newport News, so maybe I can check that out sometime.
On Saturday we went to the track since some of the guys had prelims. We were there pretty much the whole day and everyone ran really well and nearly everyone qualified to run the next day in the 800, mile, and DMR. The 5K guys, including myself, do a quick pre-race run around the city and then we go back to the hotel and then make another return to Vinny T’s for dinner. Why we went back was beyond me — there are a million other Italian places in Boston, but we were definitely guaranteed enough food. We spent the rest of the night playing Monopoly on Groff’s computer, and somehow I managed to pull off a win due to a critical deal I made early in the game. We also played the night before, but Groff and Jones colluded and dominated everyone, despite our protests.
Sunday was the big day. The only thing that had been bothering me was that they had the 5K scheduled to be run in 3 separate heats. Fortunately by the time I warmed up, they had merged the heats into two, which (I thought) would make things easier. After the race, we watched the DMR, and then Colin, Ed, and I did a run into downtown Boston, around Boston Commons, and finished at the hotel. We headed downtown again for dinner at Faneuil Hall, which was a lot like Reading Market in Philadelphia. I ate a whole pile of food including this awesome brownie that was nearly solid chocolate. The flight back was a little long, but we got in around midnight.
Now, I’m home since we’re on spring break. My main goal this week is to work as much as I can on the implementation portion of my Computer Science project. I’ve also got to figure out what to do for housing for next year. I don’t know anyone in the graduate programs here, and nearly everyone I do know will be living on campus next year. Graduate housing is separate from undergraduate, so I can’t room with any of them. I’ll probably just have to get a random roommate, then.
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