Update at semester's end

This is the last week of spring semester classes and the last week I'm home before flying off to Barcelona for 6 weeks. I was hoping to clear off everything on my TODO list so that I could spend the entire month of April working on code that I want to use in Barcelona as well as with the next bunch of REU (Research Experience for Undergraduate) students that are going to be inhabiting my lab for 8 weeks this summer. But of course as soon as I had cleared my list, a whole pile of stuff suddenly rushed in to fill the void, mainly the writing of 2 papers and 2 proposals. One paper didn't get done, the second did, following a late night of writing till 3am (resulting in the paper's on-time submission and a cold that set in immediately thereafter :P ) The 2 proposals also went out on time, with the second of the two coming down to the wire as well. I have a third one I'm working on presently, but I'll have to fine-tune that one remotely. At left is me wrestling with hardware that isn't working properly, but that we need to get going for an existing grant we're working on. The pic kind of reminds me of the work I did as a grad student over 10 years ago! I hate to leave stuff like this in inoperable condition, but time's run out.

Meanwhile at home, I knocked off stuff I had to do around the house, including bug spraying the house exterior and crawlspace, getting the oil changed on the truck, and installing the second garage door opener. The latter and a gig at Backstreets consumed two of three free weekends I had at home after returning from Austin. I haven't had much time to update the blog with anything else and the only pic that I think I managed to capture was one afternoon when driving back in a thunderstorm. You can't really see it very well in the pic, but there were sheets of rain coming down. It was a welcome rain actually, washing off green layers of pollen that had accumulated in the days before. It was like driving through a badly needed carwash. I should probably wash the car again before I leave as it's starting to look green again. Maybe I'll do that today as I have to split early and get my haircut—I tried leaving that to the last minute so that I won't have to get another one until I get back home. When I return I will have 5 REU students waiting for me in the lab and I'll already be a week behind!