Life Update

Work

I have been battling the eye tracking software and have watched the eye tracking videos from the special studies so many times because the exports don't match what I am seeing with my own eyes on the recording. I eventually gave up and calculated times manually for the participants with missing data.

I also cleaned up all the work from the special studies and merged the features into the main branch so we can propose the proof of concept to the French people and see if they want to use our tool. One group in the special studies clearly used AI. I didn't realize the kids these days were so blatantly submitting code that doesn't work and has the craziest comments. They clearly asked AI and didn't even test to see if the change had occurred, and then when I pointed this out they still submitted code with lots of unrelated changes, not even attempting to make it look like they had checked the work. It's not looking good.

We also met with the UMass people about running our pipeline on their Harmony cluster, which is long overdue. We made some progress but the GitLab tests are written in ARM and their cluster currently only runs AMD, so only some of our tests can run until we wait for them to get virtual machines running.

I've also been putting the Olympics on in the background on my third monitor. My favorite event is half pipe snowboarding but I have also dabbled in watching curling, hockey, luge, and big air snowboarding.

The Future

I have received official offers at Michigan State University and the University of Toronto. Talking to both professors made me very excited but at this point I have no idea how to decide. I'm hoping that visiting the schools will give me more information and help me to make a decision. And of course there's the part of me that still wants to move to Maine and become a lobsterman or something.

Not Work

In January, Katherine and I watched Heated Rivalry after work when we were the only ones here. Then everyone got back and we stopped doing that, so I have seen the first five episodes. Perhaps one day I will find out what happens at the cottage, but for now I feel very up with the culture when people talk about these things.

The Lamont people and extensions did our Secret Edgar gift exchange (a little late) over Zoom. It was nice to catch up with everyone.

Now that it is still light out when I leave work, I have been running more. Abby and I have also started running together once a week in the ITT, which has reminded me how much I like running with other people and also is helpful for actually sustaining a pace because I feel observed. I also accidentallly stumbled upon Futsal Club from being in the gym on Thursday nights, which has unlocked the yearning inside of me to play soccer. I am really bad now because I don't trust my left leg to do anything and am therefore pretty much a lamppost (as my high school soccer coach would say), unable to move my feet in any direction, but luckily that doesn't stop it from being lots of fun.

Katie and Chelsea came to visit last weekend and we really patronized the local establishments. In twenty four hours, we went to Tunic twice, Noodles, Packard's, Tandem Bagel, and the MFA dance thesis show. My parents also visited that weekend and we went to the new hot pot place in town and Herrell's.

This past weekend, I went to New York to meet up with Chelsea, Wesley, Persephone, Katie, George, Simone, Mazzy, Annie #1, and Annie #2. The trip originated around a Brandi Carlile concert with The Head and the Heart as the opener, which is one of the best combinations I can imagine. In particular, Brandi Carlile and Sara Bareilles performing the song that they wrote to the words of a poem of Andrea Gibson was really amazing to see live. Sidequests in the city included playing Mario Kart, visiting the candy store Wesley works at, taking the Staten Island Ferry there and back without actually disembarking at Staten Island, and seeing the Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals at the New York Public Library.