I Am

Well, the first three weeks of the semester went pretty well. I ended up dropping an international relations class so I could do more research and spend more time on OS...it was really liberating to be able to say "this just doesn't sound interesting; I'd rather be doing engineer stuff..." and then be able to change things around to my liking. OS should be a good class, even if I do end up putting quite a few hours into it.

I spent a long time in the lab earlier this week trying to make some headway, and didn't get very far. I talked to my adviser about it yesterday and we figured out a way for me to start making progress on some other things, hopefully without losing too much of the work I've already done. CMU has so many amazing faculty members...I'm really going to miss it after I graduate.

OS has been getting pretty intense also. We got feedback for our first (ok, zeroth) project today, and I made a couple really silly mistakes, though I don't know how my actual grade came out. They have a policy of releasing the comments and feedback before we see our grade, and I think that's a good philosophy since it forces us to actually look at what they said and learn from it.

I got somewhat behind on the current project from spending so much time in the lab earlier this week, and so I may not sleep much between now and Monday. The good news is that I'm enjoying it. I don't think I'd be able to handle the workload and the stress if I wasn't really interested in spending the hours working on it. I'm relatively sure that I'll become less and less chipper about it as the semester goes on, but for now things still seem pretty good.

In other news, I have a new pet peeve. It makes me uncomfortable when I'm talking to someone, and they turn everything that gets said back around into a segue for them to talk about themselves. (This is distinct from sitting around swapping anecdotes, which is itself a really satisfying form of conversation). It's just frustrating because when people talk to me I generally take the time to actually listen and respond to their situation, so I tend to assume that people are going to be willing to do the same for me. I know it's only human nature to be more concerned with one's own life and situation, (and you could probably argue that it's a bit self centered of me to expect that a conversation be about me) but sometimes it starts to feel really dehumanizing.

Last One

Dear Spring 2008 Semester,

Bring it.

All My Love,
Jennifer


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In other news: Colin visited me in DC for the last few days of Winter Break. We went to the Air & Space museum and annex. At the annex we rode the flight simulator, even though I was really freaked out about it*. After we were inside the thing and I could see and feel that it really was just a metal box with a screen inside, I felt silly for worrying. Why is it that it's so easy for the mind to create so much unreality? Anyway, we also went up into the observation deck and watched planes landing at Dulles, and that was really awesome and peaceful - we had a clear day and could see out to the mountains in the distance.

Being back in Pittsburgh is pretty cool. I'm ready to dive into the semester, and the girls and I started making spring break plans tonight. Good times.


*Yes, even though I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Being a fighter pilot involves training, though, and the ability to control the situation myself.

Io-what?

I think Barack Obama is a terrific guy. I really do. I think it's been a long time since we've seen someone who can so eloquently present a message of hope to a nation. He's been compared to Kennedy, and it's easy to see why.

At the same time. I think that, particularly when a country is in a situation where it needs to see serious change, bringing in what amounts to an almost completely inexperienced outsider is the wrong choice. My problem isn't that he wants change, no, I think he has some (not all) really valuable perspectives - it's that I don't perceive that he has the political tools (no pun intended) to actually get the job done. If elected, I see four years of stagnation and frustration. If a Democrat is elected, I'd like to see it be Hillary. I think she has enough valuable-for-the-country items on her agenda that with her political wherewithal she could do a lot of concrete good for the nation in four years.

Huckabee makes me vaguely uncomfortable. His tax platform (a national sales tax) is one of those "sounds good for about ten milliseconds" schemes, and isn't actually feasible, nor would it solve any of the problems he suggests that it would. His environmental agenda looks pretty good, but I wonder how he's going to implement any of it. I'm not sure which Republican I'd like to see elected, but I'm pretty sure it's not him. The "I'm going to create this malicious ad about Governor Romney, release it, and then yank it from the airwaves all the meanwhile stirring up enough interest to garner free publicity for the ad while putting myself "above" my own dirty politics" trick was - slimy - putting it mildly, and to me it undermines a lot of his own statements about his political integrity, etc. (Let's not be naive here; I would bet any amount of money that it was his intention from the get-go to create an ad that he could take credit for yanking.)

A lot of people say they're looking for resources to compare candidates. This is a good one that I found: