My grandmother broke her hip. I am heading to upstate New York to see her this afternoon.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

It's spring, dammit. I know that it is twelve degrees out with a windchill of three. I know that the ground is covered with snow and more is coming out of the sky. But next week is spring break. Anyway, I decided that this spring I should have a girlfriend. There is something about spring, even if it is cold and snowy, that makes a man's thoughts turn to romanace.

Speaking of spring break, apparently no one got the memo over in the math department. There are three ACC seminars next week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday I will go to upstate New York to visit my grandmother. Friday morning Kelly will cut my hair and I should be back home in time for my steak on Saturday. While I am up there I plan to pick up a couple of cases of Ramen and a big jug of Tide at Walmart. Ramen sells for seventeen cents a package up there.

Given the temperature, it looks like I am going to have to wear my union suit again, today. That is too bad because I wanted to show off my new teeshirt. It says "Thesis writing in progress. Do not disturb." I guess I will wear it on Friday when it is supposed to be a little warmer.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

As you may have heard, the stock market has been undergoing a meltdown for the past week or so. What really brought this fact home to me was a call from my stock broker. It seemed that my equity holdings had lost enough value as to put me over my margin limit. We talked for a while and I sent him a check for $1,900 to cover the margin. He had already liquidated all of my Microsoft holdings. This is a good example of why one should avoid borrowing money on equity holdings. Every couple of months you get a call from your broker that requires you to write a check. Having money is not supposed to make you broke. Maybe I will make some money selling Confessions to hold them off for a while.

I have been thinking about what I want in a house. I think that I need a four-bedroom house. One bedroom would be the master bedroom. Another would be the lab. A third would be the library and the fourth would be the exercise room. I haven't decided whether I will hang my diplomas in the library or the lab. Probably the lab because the walls of the library will be taken up with books. Back when I lived in the Silicon Valley, I lived in a two-bedroom apartment. I slept in the master bedroom and used the other bedroom as a lab. That worked out pretty well. In Utica, I could buy a four-bedroom house for cash. I figure that being able to buy a house for cash is worth at least $20,000 of salary. I will keep this in mind during my job search next year.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

In 1969, when my father was a sixth year graduate student in math at the Courant Institute of New York University, a number of things happened. One of these things was my birth. Another was that his adviser left the university. He was given two choices, find a new adviser and start over on his research or quit his PhD. He quit. My adviser announced last week that she is leaving Stevens to teach at Rutgers. She found me a new adviser at Stevens - who isn't a cryptographer - and promised to work with me from her new job at Rutgers. My other options involved going to Rutgers and starting over again and passing the qualifying exams in the math department. I chose the shortest path to graduation. I will have to travel into Rutgers frequently, perhaps as often as every Friday, to work with my adviser. I wish that I had planned to defend my thesis proposal this semester, before she leaves.

In other news, I have a meeting at 4pm this afternoon, so I am not rushing into work too early this morning. I slept ten hours so I probably won't be able to take a nap before I go in, though. I probably won't go in until seven or seven-thirty.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

It is Sunday and the drunken mobs seem to have dispersed. I am doing my laundry. I am hoping that I am one day closer to graduation. After all, the purpose of everything is to graduate. Just a couple more years now. In a way, graduation will cause problems for me because my stipend will be cut off and I will be evicted from student housing.

When I do eventually graduate, I suppose that I will have to do something other than be a student. Preferably something that I am not completely overqualified for. Graduate school is supposed to be traumatic and much has been written about the trauma endured by grad students. I haven't encountered any trauma, yet, so I don't have any idea what those people are talking about. I attribute my lack of trauma to good management by the program sponsor.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

I woke up in the middle of the night last night with the realization that I didn't have my umbrella. I feared that I had left it at the Howe Center while getting my mail and using the ATM. I called the front desk there, but they hadn't seen it. When I got up this morning, I decided to check first the lab and then the Howe Center for my umbrella. I am at the lab and my umbrella is here. That is a relief. I figure that I will hang out here until 9:30am (it is 7am now) and stop at Joe's Prime Meats on the way home to pick up my steak. I don't think that I will bring the umbrella home today. While I was here, I unpacked my new "PHD PROPOGANDA" coffee mug. I can't wait until people see it and laugh.

Today is drunk pride day in Hoboken. There will be an early Saint Patrick's Day parade and people camped out last night in anticipation. By nine o'clock in the morning, the bars will be full. By this afternoon there will be drunken rioting in the streets. I guess that this makes a lot of money for local businesses (read bars). It is a good time to stay indoors if at all possible.

My goddaughter, Jessie, is doing the artwork for the cover of Confessions of a Recovering Preppie. I am thinking that I might take my first pass at making the cover using GIMP after I get the artwork from her and then touch it up with Adobe Acrobat. I probably need to get the back cover text, when it becomes available, in encapsulated Postscript to put on the back cover. I used to know how to write Postscript but I have forgotten. Maybe I should look at some Postscript files or just use some sort of tool to generate the Postscript.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

Happy goodmorningtime. It is the first Friday in March. It is pouring outside, I got drenched coming in and I had a giant umbrella with the Stevens logo on it. There is a lot of flooding on the corners where there are no storm drains. This required a lot of obstacle avoidance on my walk into the lab. My feet are wet. Today I elected to dress casual and put on my penguin shirt. I figure I can wash it Sunday morning and wear it again on Sunday. My new coffee mug should be waiting for me at the Howe Center.

Last night I talked with a representative from BookSurge for about half an hour. This was a procedure that involved answering a lot of questions including what my Visa card number is. The upshot is that Confessions of a Recovering Preppie should be available on Amazon.com by summer. My goddaughter is doing the cover artwork. Maybe she will design the whole cover. I don't know. We will see what she wants to do. I will let you know when you can order it. The retail price will be $14.99. I need to sell a hundred copies in order to "earn out" or recoup my investment.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

We are exploring the possibility of me working as TA for CS577 Cybersecurity Laboratory in Fall 2008, which will hopefully be my last semester. CS577 is the corequisite for CS576 Secure Systems. Although we don't know who will be teaching these classes, it is likely to be someone who hasn't been hired yet, it seems likely that CS577 will be mostly run by the TA, as is traditional for lab classes. CS577 involves a lot of "C" programming, which is a fun way to amuse oneself for hours on end. It would also nail down my teaching and computer security credentials for a faculty position somewhere after graduation. I wouldn't be able to take these classes because I will be on maintainance of matriculation by then.

I am more than two-thirds the way through graduate school. At this point I am looking for the shortest path to graduation. I am wondering if I should use Dijkstra's algorithm to find it. I expect to be getting the title of Doctor about when President Bush is getting his gold watch and becoming president emeritus. I am thinking that after I graduate, I should take the GREs again so that I can determine how much dumber I have become. I know subjectively that I have become dumber because I thought that I had a deep understanding of more things before I started graduate school than I have now.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

I fell asleep at seven last night and woke up at four-thirty this morning. I was in the lab at six. I am getting my days and nights mixed up. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get to sleep after the bombshell that was dropped at our group meeting, yesterday afternoon. I can't share that news with you until this weekend, though.

When I made my coffee this morning, there was a student in the dining room studying. This was unfortunate. If I wanted to see other people, I wouldn't be making my coffee at five-thirty in the morning. Someone tried to talk to me while I was walking to work, as well.

Anyway, I will discuss what is going on this weekend.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

I had insomnia last night. I went to bed about a quarter to eight. I then slept fine until midnight. So far, just like grad school. I woke up at midnight and couldn't get back to sleep. Again, just like grad school. I took an Ambien at one and slept until 5:40. Now I need to find the pill that makes me productive the rest of the way until graduation.

I still haven't heard back from BookSurge. I am beginning to think that they don't want to print my book. I may send a note to their competitor, xLibris. I don't like xLibris because they are expensive and insist on letting them format your work for you. That is not what I want. I want to typeset my own work using LaTeX, which BookSurge will allow me to do.

My cousin, Jessie, is going to come up with artwork for the cover. She needs to read the book first, so it will not happen right away.

I made sure that my PDA and my cellphone are in my jacket so that I don't get to school and find that I forgot one of them, again.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

I got though today without my PDA. I think that I managed because my second meeting was canceled so I only had to remember two meetings. The last meeting was the best one because the person I was meeting with was talking about how influential our Eurocrypt '93 paper is. He said that not many people have the opportunity to write such an important paper. I liked him already.

Not having my PDA did not only mean not having my schedule and alarm. It also meant that I didn't have my address book. I was surprised to discover that I have the phone number for Sassos Delicatessen memorized. I also did not have my to-do list so I was unable to remember that I need to publish a paper at STOC, sell my patent, and finish writing my thesis proposal.

Whatever funding issues that may come up in the remainder of graduate school would be mitigated by selling my patent. Publishing a paper at STOC would greatly improve my chances of getting a research job and finishing my thesis proposal is the next step toward graduation. My thesis proposal is currently ninety-six pages long and there are two chapters that haven't been started. The completed thesis proposal could be as long as one-hundred-and-fifty pages, which is about thesis length. That would be good because it would minimize the risk in executing the proposal.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare

We got several inches of snow last night, but it wasn't enough to close Stevens. We are supposed to get some freezing drizzle, this morning, but apparently they are willing to chance it. I forgot my PDA this morning. I have meetings at 11am, 12:30pm and 3pm. I don't know how I will get to them all on time without my PDA sounding its alarm five minutes before each. It also has some phone numbers and passwords that I need.

I stopped at Hoboken Ice Cold Bagels this morning and got a bagel. It waS ice cold. I overslept this morning and had to deal with other students while I was drinking my coffee. I hope that they didn't give me cooties.
(C) 2007 Michael de Mare