In hindsight, I knew that working full-time for Apple while working on my thesis would suck. I just didn't anticipate-perhaps, just wouldn't accept-that it would take so long. It seems reasonable to say that I've lived a double life from the moment Sarah and I married in April 2009, when we were already looking to our future, through Zach's New ( Read more... )

It's strange to think how much my life has changed since a year ago. I interviewed for my first full-time job, after some 23 years in school. I married Sarah, after years of being just friends and then growing closer together. I moved to San Francisco, after seven years living in Austin. I began earning a living at Apple, after a lifetime of ( Read more... )

I'm just now emerging from a haze of paper writing to take stock of my situation, before I dive back into job applications and wedding planning. With my ICML submission done, I'll next get the ball rolling on writing my thesis. And I just downloaded the six IJCAI papers I agreed last year to review ( Read more... )

Last year I construed New Year's resolutions as choices. Now I treat them as guiding principles, which are perhaps less amenable to empirical evaluation but which may be of greater value to me during the coming year.Accept failure as a cost of learningFor the most part, I have lived the life of a student, in which learning entails preparation, ( Read more... )

Another day, another year, another grain of sand plummets through the neck of the hourglass. Sometimes it seems incredible that we celebrate one particular day out of 365.24 as the inauguration of a new year. Yet this day I shared with friends, some whose company I enjoy frequently, some I have missed, and some I did not know yesterday. I played ( Read more... )

Yesterday I returned dr4b to the airport, concluding a pleasant week and a half of hanging out with zml, rupes, rehana, bk1e, dvarin, and her. We played board games and ate out for lunch and dinner almost every day. We also found time to see the holiday decorations on 37th street, to take Zach's dogs for a walk in Emma Long Park, to watch a few movies, and to drink in the ( Read more... )

I don't usually subscribe to the tradition of New Year's resolutions. The practice always seemed to lack substance, but perhaps I've been looking at it all wrong. What is a New Year's resolution, anyway? Is it a goal, a promise, a commitment, a claim, a hope? My dictionary tells me that it is a formal statement of opinion or determination. For ( Read more... )

I guess I still haven't written very much about my six day road trip to Maryland and Pittsburgh. At this point, I probably won't. This fact ought not to bother me, since I got by for years without keeping a regular journal. I will say that I think I enjoyed this trip at least as much as my last visit to Pittsburgh. This time around my visit ( Read more... )