It was miserable out today so I didn’t go for a run. Hopefully tomorrow will be nicer.
Got an email from a professor at Oregon State who I emailed months and months ago about graduate study. She was email backlogged and didn’t respond until now, but her response was very positive. It’s obviously way too late to do anything, but it’s funny to think what might’ve happened had she responded before, say, December. Just another reason to keep up with your email, I suppose.
Speaking of email, I sent one off to Cornell today to get a status update. I’m going to go ahead and assume that they haven’t sent me a decision because they are fighting tirelessly for the money to pay for me. Yeah.
In other news, I got the job at the Library, or at least a job just like it. Good news. This means I will spend April earning some big bucks so hopefully I can stay on track with my savings plan. As it is, the coffers are kind of running dry until my next Daily Jolt paycheck, but according to my budget I should be in the black for the near future after that. And I now have a savings account, so all of that money is safely out of sight and out of mind.
Daily Jolt stuff is going well. I just got the go-ahead for the marketplace project on, well, Monday I suppose. Been working on that at a breakneck pace. Hopefully I should have the work flow roughed out by the end of this weekend and I can spend next week beautifying. The one thing that may be difficult is getting the search feature implemented. We might need to recompile MySQL to do that properly, which would be a pain. We shall see.
Also, I redesigned Niamh’s web site, and it’s purty. She also told me she doesn’t mind if it is on google, so I am now free to link to it from this site. Expect lots of properly linked up Niamh references now.
Oh, I made a wicked spicy chili tonight. Should’ve de-seeded the jalepeños.
Published on
March 25, 2004 in
Modality.
Niamh mentioned that I haven’t been updating my weblog lately. I told her I’ll update when I hear from Cornell. No sense in updating if I have no life events to report on.
Well, I still haven’t heard from Cornell. I was rejected from UCSD a few days ago, but I don’t really want to talk about that. A couple exciting things have happened recently. First, I’ve been making some progress on my Modality project. It actually handles images, text files and folders moderately intelligently now. A little screenshot:
“Modality draws a folder” or “The most useless file manager ever”
No editing yet, and even the display of folders is pretty sorry, but I’m slowly chipping away at how data is flowing around, which is the whole point of the thing. I have gotten away from XML for various reasons (expanded in my discussion of this project’s representation format). The next couple things to tackle are how I’m going to handle composite types, and how interactivity is going to work. I really just want to get to the point where I am trying out new ideas on a stable codebase as I go, and I’m slowly getting there.
So that’s what’s happening on my geeky side. In real life, I went to see Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind with Tracy yesterday or the day before. It was really excellent. I caught Jim Carrey on Ellen today, and it just made me want to go back and watch the thing again. In some sense it’s a “little things” suspense-romance like Amelie, and it’s at least as virtuosic cinemagraphically, but it’s a little more thrill, a little less quirk, a little more comedy, and an emphasis on the value of what you already have rather than going out and getting what you always wanted. It’s also less idealistic and more true in its portrayal of relationships. I really want to go see it again.
I just set into motion the consolidation and refinancing of my student loans. I now have all of my loans locked in at 3.375% with nelnet, which is actually a few hundredths of a percentage lower than my current variable rate loan. And significantly lower than the 5% my upcoming Perkins loan was going to be. So I’m in good shape with my debt. It’s happy debt. Well, as happy as debt can be.
I also found out that about half of my loans are unsubsidized, which means they will accrue interest even if they are deferred. These, perhaps are not as happy as the subsidized debts. But this is not a result of my consolidation, it is just a lurid fact that would have gone unnoticed until August. It’s good that I found out now so I can plan for it.
Snuffing to do items is fun.
As of tomorrow I will be covered by short term insurance. It’s a 100/0 plan with a $2,500 deductible, which would suck if I were in the doctors office, but will be excellent if I am in a catastrophic accident or am suddenly struck ill.
Hopefully this will provide some karmic insulation against getting in a catastrophic accident or being suddenly struck ill.
The green and red are creeping into my Graduate Application list. Today I got two letters: one from Indiana accepting me to their program and one from Carnegie Mellon’s Psychology Department rejecting me. Indiana has also volunteered $13,250 a year plus tuition waver for two years, which I suppose is how long the M.S. takes. So I now have two M.S. options and one Ph.D.
I am really crossing my fingers with Cornell and UCSD though. Cornell in particular since I visited, but UCSD because I think the program is really an excellent fit, even if it is far away. Hopefully those letters will come soon. I got my travel reimbursement from Cornell today, which makes my wallet happy. But I’d much rather have gotten admissions notification.
Niamh should be here any minute, and then we’re off to Granby, then to the airport on Sunday and to Colorado! I’m excited.
Interview went well today. Let’s hope I get the job so I won’t be poor anymore.
Well, after a dramatically depressed entry, I am happy to say that I have been accepted into the M.S. program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Cool. It’s a much smaller committment than the Ph.D. programs, which is appealing. And will put me in a new and exciting place. If I don’t get accepted anywhere else, and the idea of staying in Storrs for another six years makes me want to kill myself, it will be a good option. I have to look a little more closely at the faculty and see what I might be doing.
So, things to smile about.