Talking Shop
I had the great fortune to spend my afternoon at Sweetwaters with Jude and Ingrid. While working diligently on my dissertation, I have been somewhat of a recluse. I've been too tired to socialize at night and too dogged to interact much during the day. Today, I took a break from writing and analyzing data to reconnect with friends, and I find myself greatly rewarded.
Ingrid, Jude, and I are all young scholars in related fields. Today we talked about the challenges of finding an audience for our work and how audience might determine, in large part, who we are as researchers. We shared horror stories of meeting conference deadlines and the loneliness of dissertation writing. We compared notes on job hunts and what to do with dissertations once they're written. We traded citations and names of interesting researchers. We even talked about how facts on the internet are sometimes wrong. This all may sound boring or typical for academics, but remember that writing one's dissertation is a lonely, remarkably individual endeavor. Sure, committee members, student friends, understanding non-academics, etc. are essential to the process, but the bottom line is that a lone scholar spends a great portion of each day alone, silent, writing.
In answering Ingrid's question about who I interviewed this morning, I found myself remembering why I care about the bridge project I study (because it worked!) and why I'm interested in collaboration in the first place (because we change the world when we work together). When we talked about the differences between departments that focus on the ACM and those that focus on the AoM, I remembered why Michigan was the right place for me (I care deeply about what people are able to accomplish when they work together and the technologies that enable them to do so.).
I recommend getting out of your office, finding a couple colleagues you haven't talked to in a while, and making a break for a nice coffee/tea shop. Maybe you already knew that was a good idea, but I'd forgotten how satisfying such an afternoon can be.
New (to me) and Useful: Upromise
I owe a lot of money in student loans. A lot. I'll take nearly any help I can get paying them down. Upromise to the rescue!
Because I have some loans serviced by Sallie Mae, I can transfer my Upromise account monies to my loans. I'm pretty sure it works like this:
- Open an Upromise account
- Link your credit cards to your Upromise account
- Shop at stores that contribute to Upromise accounts
- Small percentages of your purchases get put into your Upromise account
- Transfer your Upromise account money to your Sallie Mae-serviced loan
- Repeat steps 3-6
See, free and simple. You can also get your friends and family to sign up so that percentages of their purchases go to your Upromise account too. Thanks, family! Mine came out like gangbusters and signed up right away. Let me know if you have no loans and no one else to support via Upromise; I'd love to get a piece of your shopping too. 
Upromise is good for people planning to go to school too, but I don't know all the details there.
Oh, I almost forgot. Upromise partners with restaurants and bars too. That's right. 4% of what you eat out or drink can go to your savings account. Woot! Ann Arbor restaurants and bars include aut bar, Arbor Brewing Company, Leopold Bros., and Scorekeepers. There are more, but that's a start. Again, woot!
From DTW with like
I wonder if I'm the only person at DTW blogging right now? I bet not. Given how many bloggers are on the move this week, and how prone we all are to complaining about travel (especially holiday travel), I'm sure someone else in the McNamara Terminal is venting his/her frustrations while I type.
You, dear reader, are lucky. I'm not writing to complain! Instead, I'm writing to catch up. I've experienced some personal and professional turmoil in the last few weeks, and my little blogging adventure had to get pushed down the priority stack. But here I am, on vacation, and I thought a little blogging might cheer me up.
You'll be interested to know that it takes a mere 46 minutes to get from the front door of the Sheraton Four Points in Ann Arbor to the down escalator just past security at Detroit's McNamara Terminal. I know you just shouted, "Liar!" or something even less nice, but it's true. I timed it. I took the 3:00pm Michigan Flyer shuttle from the Sheraton, sat in the very last row of the bus, and still made it through security by 3:46pm. Whatever security does (or does not do) at Detroit should be repeated in as many U.S. airports as possible. (Are you listening, Denver?!)
I hopped on the tram and landed here, near the Taco Bell, by the high number gates. I ran into some of the flight attendants who will be manning (or womanning as the case may be) Northwest flight 757 to Minneapolis. They're chatty and smiley and like their tacos crunchy. Why would I tell you this? Because I'm sure some horrible passenger is going to try to ruin one of their days by being a jerk, and I just wanted you to know that these flight attendants are just like the rest of us.
Oh, that reminds me of my favorite good sportsmanship commercial of the football season. I think it's by the Big 12. It has people yelling at some guy gardening and some other people doing other jobs, and the narrator says something like, "You don't do it anywhere else." That's right. Referees and flight attendants deserve respect too.
I'm off to compile a "what I learned in the last 2 weeks" post. I'll send it over from Iowa sometime this week. May your holiday travel be safe and enjoyable whether you're going across the living room or across the country.
My not-so-digital life
It turns out the physical world still very much affects me. I don't mean that I still have to walk around or that I still bump into things and bruise myself. I mean that things like DVDs, papers, and Cubs tickets still muck up my plans.
I'm on vacation in Okoboji, Iowa, and I thought I'd packed well. I thought wrong. I forgot to return some DVDs to Blockbuster on my way out of town, and I'm pretty sure I'm now the proud owner of The Long Kiss Goodnight and the not-at-all-proud owner of How to Lose Your Lover. Yes, I could just send them back to the store from here, but that would require effort I'm not sure I have the energy to muster.
I also forgot that my syllabus for "Getting Started: GSIs Teaching Graduate Students," a Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) orientation I'm teaching in late August, is due next week. Luckily, my very helpful officemate, Jun Zhang, was kind enough to send me all the papers I've gathered in preparation for writing that syllabus. UPS delivers to this remote area where DHL and FedEx fear to tread, and my papers arrived today. I guess that means I'll write a syllabus in the next few days. It seems strange to call a workshop plan a "syllabus," but that's what the guy at CRLT called it.
Two more things - Cubs tickets and more DVDs. I forgot to turn on my vacation status thing on Half.com, and someone bought my West Wing DVDs. Thanks, Chris, for getting into my apartment and sending those off for me! My eBay reputation stays unblemished this year; we can almost forget about that phone snafu from a while back Thanks to Nicki, I don't have to worry about the Cubs tickets I also forgot in my apartment. She got them off via USPS to my cousin's waiting family. I wouldn't be able to forgive myself had I ruined a 3 year old's chance to see a Cubs game. Unforgivable!
So what have I learned during the last few days?
- My friends are wonderful people (well, not learned, but reminded).
- My need to send and receive postal mail increases as my distance from my apartment increases.
- I do need more than my laptop to get work done.
I think I've sent and received more postal mail in the last 5 days than in the 5 months before that. Well, wait, I was the lucky recipient of a number of fantastic post cards. Maybe I deal with mail more often than I notice. It just seems odd to me that I've had to arrange for the delivery of so many items in the last few days. Of course, I haven't even mentioned Harry Potter. I had the last book sent to my parents' lake house, and it took until very late Saturday afternoon for the darn thing to arrive. 749 pages is too many. My eyes are tired, but my curiosity is sated.
Now that I've managed to blather on about mail for an entire blog post, I invite you to check out my Okoboji vacation pictures. You'll be jealous!
The Pearl lasts for.ev.er
So I was on the phone for almost 200 minutes today, and the Pearl still has battery remaining. In fact, it has more than one bar of battery remaining. I didn't even have time to get the thing fully charged! I'm impressed. Yes, I got another BlackBerry Pearl today. I ran back to the comforting arms of T-Mobile, and I'm thrilled. It took literally 30 seconds to sync all my data to the phone, and I could not be more pleased. Given the 4+ hour debacle of trying to get the Treo and the Mac to get along, I was bracing myself for difficulty. Everything worked smoothly though.
I just returned from a couple hours out with some friends at the 8 Ball Saloon. The 8 Ball is a truly wonderful place. Ann Arbor doesn't have many bars that combine dart boards, pool tables, cheap drinks, laid back attitudes, and permanent hand stamps. In fact, I'm not sure we have any other bars that have all those things. Oh, and popcorn! Yum. I stopped after one drink tonight, but you wouldn't know it if you'd seen me lying in the back of a pickup during a post-midnight McDonald's run. My friend Jessie and I needed some French fries, and Cory obliged. Here's the evidence to prove it:
Libby finds music on YouTube
Gentle readers, I must confess, I love pop music. Not all of it, obviously, but sometimes I can't help myself. Have you seen Josie and The Pussycats? Many things in that movie grabbed my attention, but I identified most with the poor saps who were mesmerized by the pop music. YouTube is the newest way pop music infiltrates my life. A couple weeks ago I was reading a thing on Forbes.com about the most popular videos on YouTube. They definitely lumped me with 13 year old girls because I, too, love Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" and its video. At first, I was worried that my cultural growth had stopped at 13, but I think my May travels to historical places and museums is recent evidence to the contrary. I wanted to share this video with you all though because I find that people who hear the song in my car get hooked. It's catchy, especially if you're a girl who went to high school.
I also found a video from the Nadas, an Iowa band I miss seeing live. Lucky for me, I'll be in Iowa for their show in Arnolds Park in July. Many of my friends from Michigan and Chicago will be there too, and it will be a great day. I love friends!
Field Trips and Impoverished Media
You may be surprised to hear that the rest of life continued as usual even while my days were full of documentary filming. In the last few days, I went on a rather interesting field trip and had a couple long IM conversations.
My field trip was a Saturday night at the Detroit Eagle with one of my gay boyfriends and one of his friends from out of town. You may think a gay leather bar would be a dangerous or skeevey place, but you'd be wrong. The men at the Eagle were friendly (to me and to each other) and interesting. The bar was cleaner, less expensive, and less creepy than your average Ann Arbor bar. The Eagle is nicer than Scorekeepers, the Monkey Bar, Touchdown Cafe, maybe even Conor O'Neills on the weekend. There was an air of respect at the Eagle that is definitely lacking in those straight meat markets.
I was going to continue this post and include stuff about my IMing, but I think I'll start a new post. Is that the right convention? 1 post ~ 1ish topics?
Drag queens and king sized beds
You may be wondering what those two things have in common. It's simple, really. They are both things that my four days in Philadelphia have that my life in Ann Arbor does not.
I'm in Philadelphia for a few days so I may attend Connections 2007. I'm presenting innovation diffusion research on Saturday morning. I'll post my presentation sometime this weekend so you can see what I had to say. The conference looks pretty interesting, and I'm looking forward to the chance to meet other iSchool grad students.
The drive from Ann Arbor to Philadelphia is not one I'd recommend. Police in Ohio have nothing to do, apparently, and so they set up shop every 500 feet on the turnpike. I drove from Ann Arbor to the Pennsylvania border, and my heart was pounding the whole time. I'm sure you all know how hard it is for me to obey speed limits, and so you must understand. I also drove us from the Lancaster Plaza to the Comfort Inn, and that portion of the trip was enjoyable despite the late rush hour traffic they have here. Traffic makes me feel urban, so I don't mind it in cities outside Ann Arbor. Well, that's not entirely true; the Dan Ryan project makes me pretty cranky.
Our hotel is next to the Ben Franklin bridge, and what a beautiful structure! I'll take a bunch of pictures and post them here next week. It's blue and wonderful. I like to think that I would've liked it even if I didn't study bridge building.
The drag show Jude and I saw was at Bob and Barbara's on South Street. Apparently they host this show every Thursday night. I have to say the drag king was much better than most of the drag queens we saw. Pictures to come. Bob and Babara's has a crazy drink special - a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of Jim Beam for $3. Yes, that's just three American dollars. You may be thinking that such a combination would lead to a night of drunken horribleness. At first, I worried about that too. Then, I drank my Jim Beam and realized that no, such a combination ensured sobriety. Jim Beam burns and does not taste good. PBR is one of my favorite domestics, but I couldn't even finish my can after that shot. It was a cheap night out with decent entertainment. Thanks, Philadelphia!
Now my cheap night is over, and I'm retiring to my king size bed. I should look in to getting one of these. It's quite lovely. Although the folks over at bettersleep.org seem to think a king size bed is for couples and/or people with children (and that single sleepers should get queens), let me speak for all the other single, childless people out there when I say, "We deserve roomy sleeping accommodations too!" Sleep well, all!
Coming full circle
Remember way back in 2000 when I started working at Hubbard Online? They later became Hubbard One, and then eventually were snapped up by Thomson. John Fish, Hubbard's man-in-charge at the time, had a brother who owned some coffee shops in their native SE Michigan. At least, I think it was his brother. Anyway, Bob Fish owned some coffee shops called BEANER'S, and he wanted a website. So, at some point that first year, I was tasked with building him one. It was a bear bones HTML job handed off from the excellent Hubbard designers to the company's newest intern. Beaner's (I'm protesting their egregious use of capital letters) wasn't the first site I worked on, but it was certainly near the beginning of my Hubbard tenure. Now, here we are, 7 years later, and I'm sitting in a Beaner's coffee shop in Ann Arbor, MI, working on my dissertation proposal. Someone at Hubbard, or some other web shop, has updated their site since it was first built, but seeing it and sitting here gave me a bit of nostalgia.
I learned many things while at Hubbard - ASP, .NET, database architecture, how to eat lunch in the loop for less than $5, JavaScript, that project management is enticing, all kinds of things. The skills that have come in most handy lately, though, are those I acquired during breaks and over lunch while I was schooled at the foosball table. During my summer as an intern, I had a bunch of free time during which the other interns and many of the systems guys and developers would beat up on each other at the company foosball table. That poor table endured a lot of abuse, and I'm sure it was a party to more secrets than any other piece of furniture in the place. My favorite foosball memory was Chris yelling, "I love myself!" after making a particularly impressive shot. I think that happened during the last company tournament in which I competed.
Thanks to Microsoft Research, we have a foosball table at SI North as well. This table is much more well-built than the one at Hubbard, but it doesn't see nearly as much action. I'd like to see some revival of the SI North foosball "community." I understand that there are a few of us who rarely, if ever, lose, but that shouldn't prevent anyone from challenging any of us. I'm willing to clear the database and start everyone off with a clean slate in the foosball ladder. Maybe we'll even see a school tournament later in the summer. Until people at SI North start playing again, you can find me schooling cocky wanna-bes at Leopold Bros. and in Bill's basement.
What's my point, you ask? Well, I wanted you all to know that even though summer internships often feel like a waste, they are not. You may get lucky like I did and learn not only how to build web apps but also how to talk smack and score goals on an angle. See you at the tables!