Miss Piggy Lunchbox

So yesterday (Thursday) at about 6:00 I finally finished off the results/discussion chapter of my thesis.  I had been painstakingly running experiment after experiment and validating results every step of the way, but I finally ran “every” experiment I needed.  I actually think my advisor will think of more for me to run and, in fact, I can think of one set of experiments I need to run to demonstrate a certain aspect of my thesis.

So that’s a milestone.  All that I’ve got left to write (for the first time) is the literature review, intro, and conclusion.  Yeah, just starting the lit review now.  I wonder how common that is in academia, to write the part that talks about what others have done before you after you did what you did.  I mean, I don’t expect any surprises…if somebody had already done this my advisor or reader probably would have known about it.

Anyway, the real good news coming out of yesterday (Thursday) is that one particular experiment went the way I wanted it.  See, my implementation approaches the sequence labeling problem with a pipeline of classifiers focused on different entities in the larger information extraction problem.  This pipeline division of labor was created in the spring when a larger team was attacking the problem and we needed to divide up the person-labor.  That made sense for distributing work in the spring, but it’s a ridiculous reason for the design an algorithm.  So my advisor pointed this out and I needed to run an experiment that was essentially the same approach as mine except used a single classifier to find all entities at once instead of multiple classifiers over the pipeline.  I really need the numbers to be worse to justify my entire thesis.  They were.  So that was nice, too.

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Okay, so all of the above was drafted Thursday night and planned for publication on Friday.  But when I got home from campus on Friday afternoon and set out to work, I found out that the fan in my computer had given up the ghost and as a result the machine refused to start.

Can you believe that?  Is this out of a movie or what?  On Sunday the server at school went down.  Sunday and Tuesday nights were filled with the Internet connection to our house not working for long but intermittent periods.  And now my machine up and croaks.  All of this happening between one and two weeks before the end of the quarter.  Seriously, life, should I line up my balls for you so next time you can really kick ‘em square?

So I pulled apart my computer and tried to clean out the fan myself, but that didn’t do anything.  I don’t think it’s just plugged with dust…I think it’s dead.  I considered ordering a part over eBay but realized I’d probably screw that up.  So I took it into a place and they said they’d get back to me in three days…with an estimate.  And to get the estimate they only needed the part number.  Which I had because I had taken apart the computer.  But they still said three days.  I also had to sign something that said they weren’t liable for damage to my machine or data due to, among other things, “employee mistakes.”  I pointed out to the employee and could barely contain myself from laughing.  What a joke.  This laywerism gone too far is courtesy of eBits on Capitol Hill by the way.  Whatever.

Then I drove to Best Buy to buy a new machine.  In rush hour.  On a Friday.  In December.  By a mall.

Then I decided I didn’t like any of those machines and felt emotionally unstable anyway, so I took My Baby up on her offer to send a co-worker home with her computer for me to use (she had already left town for the weeKENd).  And I found a buddy who would let me use his, too.  This all came together simultaneously.

So anyway, since then I’ve written the intro, lit review, and conclusion, and put references in all over my paper.  I’ve also implemented the feedback I had on every chapter except one.  I have not run any of those other experiments yet, but finishing those up as well as going through that final chapter are my priorities for tomorrow (Sunday).

As if my emotional management weren’t tenuous enough, not only have I had to deal with this huge hindrance to me completing my degree on time, but even as I’m moving forward again I also have to deal with losing my computer.  It could have been worse, I know.  I had backed up the whole thing last Sunday and had e-mailed out the latest version of the document so I was able to retrieve that.  Still, though, I can’t handle this losing my computer thing.  It’s a symptom of the times were in as well as my lifestyle, but I am directionless and lost without my computer.  It’s how I organize my day, my finances, etc.  All of my reminders are on it in a complex organizational system that keeps me moving forward.  So even if I go get a new computer I’ll have to restructure everything, plus what happens to everything else going on now…that’s information that’s now on My Baby’s backup computer.

Plus just once I’d like to move to a new machine without killing the old one.  After those punks stole our extra computer in September I was looking forward to getting a new machine and moving the one that died yesterday into the role of watching baseball on, but now even with the next machine I’m back to no baseball computer.  That’s not the worst thing, it’s just one more thing.

Anyway, life, you know.

Oh, I did baby laundry for the first time this weekend ‘cuz we got a bunch of second hand clothes.  Apparently there is a law that baby clothes have to have animals on them.  You didn’t hear me say this, but it was awfully cute.  Felt kinda great…I’m sure that won’t last.

So this will probs be my last post for a while.   I hope to be back to tell you about the best albums of 2009 and make some MPL mixes for the year.  And if I graduate I’ll pop in to let you know.  Otherwise I won’t.

I wasn’t quite sure I believed it when it was mentioned in my speech technology class, but this article from the BBC has some really cool findings about how elephants communicate through their feet, using the ground as an acoustic medium.

“We are focusing on the idea that elephants may be able to detect seismic vibrations through the earth,” explained fellow researcher Lynette Hart, from University of California, Davis.

“That would give them information about the location of other elephants, whether they are in distress, if they are family members and also tell them something about distant weather patterns.”

…

By sensing the seismic waves caused by the foot stomping of their counterparts, the elephants may be able to interpret the warning signals of far-off danger.

“[Elephants] are highly social; they vocalise often and they like to maintain acoustic contact with other herds.

“If they were able to do this over a much longer distance, then elephants could forage at much longer distances in the dry season and still maintain social contact.

That’s it.  I have nothing else on this front.