from the desk of stinkpot

so my server took a bit of a vacation the last week or so. last friday, i decided to try and earn my yellow belt in linux administration as i migrated my filesystem to a raid 1 configuration. [damn you newegg and your cheap hard drive deals!!] i figured that although i do regular backups of my pictures and music, a perfectly mirrored fileserver would save me a lot of time when my hard drive inevitably crashed.

well, i found out that board does indeed hit back. i’d estimate i’ve spent a total of 24 hours in the past week recompiling linux kernels and hunched over raid manuals. so much for saving myself time. the most salient lesson i’ve learned is to not believe the lovey-dovey hype: linux can be a cruel and obstinate scamp. ultimately, i was forced to wipe down my entire hard drive, upgrade to debian etch, and offering all the major deities sacrifices as i attempted to restored my blog and gallery from backup disks. it would be the perfect irony if in a quest to make my fileserver more robust, i managed to lose all my data.

but thankfully, just like mr. miyagi said it would, hard work pays off (even if your opponent pulls a cheap shot and decides that it won’t read floppy or cd-rom boot disks). almost all of my webserver’s functionality has been restored; i even took advantage of my computer’s denuded case to install a snazzy new sound card. ahhh, it feels so good to be a geek.

shown to me by a fellow grad student this morning:

1) pamphlet advertising a new energy campaign at mit: “do it in the dark.”
1) green fluorescent condom, packaged in black plastic and a big white font that read, “now glows in the dark!”
according to the handout, if everyone at mit had sex in the dark, the school would save 22 kilowatts of energy a day.

family planning, energy conservation … talk about responsibility.

i’m going to try and post more photos here, even though i’ve been pretty lousy about it lately. here’s a neat one i took last weekend over near watertown in the late afternoon. things i’m trying to do:

1) capture a diagonal [roof, clouds]- a book i’ve been reading about photo composition stresses that strong diagonals make for compelling photos.
2) “simultaneous contrast” an idea introduced to me at a nifty talk here at school by dan margulis, universally acclaimed as one of the world’s finest color correctionists.
if i understood him correctly, what i want to do is not just have good contrast in my images, but have strong contrast between colorful segments of the photo [ie exaggerate differences between blues and yellows in the sky].

the second year of grad school is the best thing that has ever happened to my body.

for one thing, unlike undergrad, i sleep now. a lot. without 9am classes anymore, i’m able to get 8 hours of sleep a night. who knew you could say good morning with any sincerity?

i’ve also finally been inspired to see physicians.  recognizing that my most heroic drinking companions are all in medical school, i’d long ago resigned myself to a lifetime of WebMD and self-medication. i’m not sure what changed recently [perhaps it’s my well-rested demeanor] but i see doctors now – all of them.  i’ll have seen the dentist, a primary care physician [never had one before] and an ear doctor. the ear doctor was a delightful surprise; it turns out mit offers free earwax removal – a service i simultaneously find repulsive, fascinating, and unfortunately indispensible ever since my face got into a fight with a bush three years ago — and lost.

and lastly, i’m getting good exercise. i cycle daily to mit and twice a week across cambridge to harvard. more importantly, i’m finally availing of the 25m pool that sits across the street from my lab. for the past month, i’ve been swimming about 45 minutes every weekday. it’s terrific – i look in the mirror now and see all sorts of muscles in unfamiliar places.  [that, and my new facial hair along my jawbone, has christina convinced i’ve hit puberty again.]  in fact, i’m enjoying swimming so much that i’ve even signed up for a stroke technique class at the aquatic center.

the first session of said class met this evening. our instructor jeff is sensational for two reasons.  awesome point #1: jeff has great hair – he’s got this mesmerizing white-guy fro that radiates at least 6 inches out from his head in every direction. i wouldn’t dare denigrate jeff’s coif by comparing it to carrot-top’s – picture a much more regal mane, like sideshow bob’s. awesome point #2: jeff is very good at making me suck less at swimming. things i’m going to need to remember for my freestyle:

• bend my elbow and keep my forearm near my body when i pull;
• relax my neck and keep my head down;
• stop rotating my left wrist when it enters the water; keep it straight;
• keep my elbows pointed straight up when pulling my arms out of the water

i’ve never taken a swimming class before and consequently nearly drowned during the lesson. i must have swallowed half the pool. still, the above points made a huge difference for my freestyle stroke and were big revelations. indeed i already consider stroke technique the best gym class i’ve ever taken. it’s somehow even surpassed my sophomore fencing lessons at columbia, which were taught by a hungarian national champion and olympian. the man had a gift for being so intense it was hilarious; my favorite admonition of his, told in a strict tone of voice, was, “hold our epees the same way we’d hold our girlfriends’ teats: softly, yet firmly.”

so to wrap up, mit is doing wonders for my body. this place is like a giant spa.

biological engineering here at mit is a giving department. their discoveries give sick people hope. their innovations give scientists new tools. and, most importantly, their annual retreat gives grad students an all-expenses-paid-trip somewhere in new england.

things i’m going to remember about this trip:

1) having a bizarre, alcohol- and chili burger-induced nightmare the first night of the retreat. unlike my usual dreams where i’m battling half king-kong / half steel-plated tyrannosaurus rex chimeras on islands owned by mr. burns, this one was really disturbing. my nightmare had a pretentious art school patina to it: all of the colors were shades of black, gray, and chrome. colin meloy, decemberists frontman and dreamboat, tragically sails into view, hunted by two shadowy figures who remind me of those russian spies in rocky & bullwinkle. a shot rings out and time slows down enough for me to make out a bullet leisurely ripping through poor colin’s chest. horrified, i actually moan loudly enough to wake myself up. “ooooaaaaggggh” – i make the sound of a tortoise deflating.

my labmate who’s sharing the hotel room with me stirs on the other bed. i fear the worst: that my moaning and thrashing has awoken him, who must now think i’ve just wrapped up some paroxysmal wet dream. great. i could try explaining myself in the morning: “so about my groans last night …” but, if i hadn’t had woken him up, broaching the subject would now force me to haltingly walk my labmate through my freaky-ass night terrors. explanation or no explanation, going to the lab would be awkward for the next couple of weeks. [funny how that later scenario bothered me, but i seem to have no problem describing my nightmare on this blog ...]

reasoning that opening my mouth had already gotten me into enough of a mess, i decided not to say anything.

2) taking a class IV geek pilgrimage to newick’s lobster shack, birthplace of newick notation. behold, the vatican of deep-frying devotees the world over. for god’s sake, they had deep-fried cheesecake on the dessert menu!

3) hearing my adviser explain just why exactly his running shorts were so short that myself and another running partner were given explicit instructions not to make him wait for us in the hotel lobby before our run (lest my adviser be seen by other faculty). “they were $5 at target – i couldn’t pass up a deal that good!” funny, that’s just what kim-jong said about those nuclear centrifuges. zing!!

chris brought to my attention today that i poured the cynicism on a little thick in my earlier post. fair enough – i did feel like a brooding bessy that day. but, i didn’t intend for that post to belie just how happy i am with how things are going right now.

basically, i feel like life is about as good as schwarzenegger is hard to spell. (and yes, i did steal that line from teenage mutant ninja turtles ii: the secret of the ooze, which we just watched this evening. [and yes]^2 that was the one featuring vanilla ice.) let’s see:

• i actually get paid a pleasant sum of money to get a degree in something i find terribly interesting from mit.  i don’t feel like i’m going to work in the morning; i’m doing something much more pleasant than that.
• my job affords me enough freedom to take long vacations at will as well as work from home at my leisure.
• my research is progressing splendidly (knock on wood). i find it stimulating, i’m making good progress, and i feel like it’s of scientific import.
• both my lab and adviser are terrific: i’m surrounded by cool, thoughtful people who love science the way fat kids love cake (also, sadly, stolen).
• home life is wonderful – my girlfriend and i finally cohabitate. icing on the fat kids’ cake: we can afford a 2BR apartment, something unheard of for students our age back home in NYC. and, we even had enough money left over to spring for a sweet tv. (no cable though – my self-discipline is already lost beyond youtube’s event horizon.)
• all sorts of other little things that i’ll never remember more than 4 hours after they happen. luckily, this one occurred only 2 hours ago: the decemberists concert at avalon. chris (dressed in a black long-sleeve & skirt like she was “going to a hipster funeral”) and i got to stand in about the third row from the stage at a relatively small venue and watch probably the best live act either of us has ever seen play. the decemberists are at this perfect phase for concert-going: popular & talented enough that they’ve got loads of adoring, mildly fanatical fans, yet not so mainstream or snooty to be playing in arenas. they played a bunch of their singles: 16 military wives, sons & daughters, o valencia!. but, what nearly gave me a brain aneurysm was seeing them perform one of my all time favorite epic ballads: the mariner’s revenge song. hearing perhaps my favorite band play my favorite song as a laughing christina and i danced right beneath them on a snowy night – that was sheer joy and exactly what i want to remember about grad school in boston. sheesh, enough mush, here’s a video i took of some slimy whale on decemberists action:

so in short, i’m having the time of my life here in grad school. odd how people usually describe grad degrees as the crap you need to wade through in order to reach a good job + happiness. here i am worried that having fun and doing well to get my phd is leading me towards a lifetime of discontent.

****

full decemberists disclosure: i’ve got an aching 2nd grade crush on decemberist jenny conlee. something about seeing a shy, slightly clumsy girl rock without abandon has me moonstruck. and come on, she can play both the accordion and xylophone – what’s not to love?!

oh so close to finally getting all of the photos from the philippines online.

sorting through all 1600 original photos was like sitting through a colorful, but still intensely repetitive assembly line. what doesn’t help is my habit of taking two or three photos for every single shot i want (made necessary by my lousy focusing skillz). making the photo processing much more enjoyable, however, was getting a chance to use some new photo software: apple’s aperture. i outgrew my childhood photo software friend – iphoto – some time ago, but really had nothing else to turn to. until last week, that is, when aperture descended like some steve jesus-bestowed revelation.

finally, i can adjust individual color channel levels, batch change photos, and edit RAW files. aperture is like a neutered version of photoshop (can’t draw nearly as much), but with all of iphoto’s elegant and intuitive ways of browsing through image libraries. in addition, someone has even written a free plug-in that lets me directly upload images from aperture to and my webserver’s photo gallery. and, i’m only scratching the surface; i feel like i’ve been handed a 16-ounce swiss army knife when all i wanted was a small pair of scissors and a screwdriver. because believe you me – this thing weighs a ton: aperture was drinking about 4.5 gigs of swap memory before it crashed on me earlier this evening. chubby could use some stairmaster.

like clockwork, my annual quarter-life crisis strikes each spring. daylight savings just gets my existential juices flowing.

this time, i thought i’d worry about skating to where the puck is going to be; instead of grieving over what i’m doing with my life in the present, i’d worry about what’s going to happen to me in the future. (hey, to become king geek in high school – chess captain – you need a little foresight.) now is as good as time as any to figure out what i want from my life & career.

[heh, shows how much foresight i've got, waiting until after entering a doctoral program to ask myself these questions. actually, that's unfair - i had thought about it before and simply given myself fluffy answers: "science," "doing good," etc. i couldn't help it: it's like grad schools have this colossal "hazy aspiration" magnet sitting deep beneath them. me < 1 ohm; i was unable to resist.]

upon further review, i’ve been able to wipe some of the dew off of the windshield. a partial list of things i’d like out of my future career:

1. opportunity to explore off-the-beaten-track places and actually get to know the people who hang out there.
2. first-hand knowledge that what i do actually improves someone’s life. [bonus points if that someone could really use the help, such as the philippines, where the average wage loiters around $100 a month.]
3. science.

ok, well, clearing up 2 out of 3 isn’t so bad.

in any case, i was a bit shell-shocked to finally realize that my current trajectory – phd -> academia or research in industry – has me landing nowhere near (1) and (2). either professor or lab scientist means i get to sit in an office or lab for 10-12 hours a day. to provide my science experiments with a stable upbringing, i will have married a single research institution. poor ventilation and mis-hued fluorescent lights will have presided over the ceremony. i could elope and become a field-scientist (and get some vitamin D), but that still doesn’t really satisfy (2). who cares if some collection work i do ultimately leads to a useful drug 20 years from now? like any patriotic american, i want my reality-tv participants attractive and my professional gratification immediate.

and then there’re science’s hopeless dependency issues. “write this grant for me.” “have you read my latest papers?” they stick the adjective “cutting-edge” and the noun “research” together for a reason: no one cares about re-discovery of what’s already known. that puts the kibosh on any hopes of achieving (1) above via long-term vacation or sabbatical (estrangement). [for instance, mit is probably an extreme case, but a professor i know who's going on sabbatical is using his time to go: nowhere. his sabbatical will be used to catch up on research.]  there’s so much to see, inhale, smell, eat, drink, and regurgitate in the world. it took a while, but i think i’ve finally realized that although i’d rather take the pythagorean theorem over the empire state building, being able to say that i’ve made a lifelong friend and gone binge-drinking on every continent would probably trump both.

and then it hit me. i screwed up. i should have just gone to med school and done doctors without borders until i needed to start a family. or until i had grown so cynical by the poverty i was confronted with that i staved off insanity by starting a general practice in the countryside. whichever came first, i guess. either way, i’d have some good stories to tell my grandkids (and post to a blog!)

ok, too sleepy to finish this post. will hopefully upload putative resolution (now with 100% less phd-abandonment!) tomorrow.

lots of stuff i’ve wanted to mention, but don’t individually muster sufficient activation energy for me to post.

1. inspired by my trip back to the philippines, i learned how to cook one of my favorite filipino dishes over the weekend: chicken adobo. for those of you unfamiliar with it, adobo is the quintessential filipino poultry dish; it’s like chicken parm for italians. needless to say, the part of me that misses the philippines the most – my palette – is thrilled.
2. in spite of the heaping spoonful of sugar i dumped into the adobo pot, dinner was still bittersweet. christina and i had prepared a meal for our closest (in terms of both rapport and situation to our apartment) friends here in boston, j & h. our friends confirmed that indeed, they would most likely live as RAs in undergraduate housing next year. of course, i’m thrilled that they’ll enjoy free housing next year; it’d be a bold-faced lie, though, to say i won’t miss having them live only a few blocks away. my stomach swears it sensed the silhouette of the sinking feeling you get when your first friend moves away to college – perhaps it’s because my friends are leaving for college all over again.
3. in what could very well be the most creative action of our lives, we hatched a rough screenplay after a milky filipino dessert. the film’s name: FOBulous! partially in homage to the romance movie primeval (a modern-day romeo & juliet, where romeo is cast as a 40-ft crocodile with a taste for human corpses and juliet is played by human corpses), FOBulous will tell the true story of pauly shore’s childhood: west-african guerilla leader. the 6th-sense-like twist will be that pauly shore isn’t a soldier at all – he’s really a chinese tour-guide from tiananmen square. oh and there will be no speaking whatsoever in the movie, as all thoughts and dialogue will be conveyed by pantomine. shooting begins whenever we befriend someone who owns a video camera.
4. i proferred not one, but one-and-a-half insights today during scientific discussions today with my PI (principal investigator = lab generalissimo = arbiter of when i finally escape school). this is a big deal – i almost always score no original thought when talking him; instead, his greater intellect + experience usually squash my head’s poor little homunculus the way big barbara biggio would crush my scrawny frame by sitting on me in the first-grade wood chip playground. my ego, which still fears the mit intelligence gestapo who’s tasked with identifying and removing profoundly incompetent grad students, has taken to not answering the phone at work. the recent decision by my gray matter to stand up for itself, however, has at least got my little homunculus smiling.

because its journalists – even those covering business misdealings – don’t see creative writing and news reporting as mutually exclusive disciplines:

“Like worms that surface after a torrential rain, revelations that emerge when an asset bubble bursts are often unattractive, involving dubious industry practices and even fraud.”

[crisis looms in mortgages]

for further tutorials in expressive writing from the times corporation, see a.o. scott’s recent review of 300 (an absolute joy to read).