Well, this feels like old news at this point, but I have officially graduated with a Ph.D. in computer science from UNC. It's great to be done, but man, writing the dissertation was definitely the hardest thing I've done in my life ( Read more... )

I help out with the jr. high youth group at church. My youth pastor, Jeremy, happens to be a pretty big football fan. Whenever we have a retreat or something, there's almost certainly going to be a football game at some point ( Read more... )

Wow, it's been ages since I've posted! I suddenly find myself with a bit more spare time on my hands (more on that in a later post), so I'm going to see if I can address that sticky note titled "Pending LJ Posts". I'm gonna skip the back-dating and just speak in past tense ( Read more... )

Ever since starting grad school in North Carolina, I have always driven my car home to Arkansas for Christmas. It's about a 14 hour trip, which I usually make in one day. This time, I flew home. I thought that would make for a shorter overall travel time. I thought wrong ( Read more... )

Living at Chicopee has been a dream. The six of us (including Darnell, who moved in a month or two ago) get along famously. We often hang out together in the evening, whether we have guests or not. And three nights a week, we do push-ups together ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I drove up to Washington & Lee University on my own initiative. I've applied to be a computer science professor there, so I was curious about the place. I also wanted to connect with Rick Peterson, the CTO of the university and an old friend of my advisor's ( Read more... )

Last weekend, I flew home to spend Thanksgiving with my family and my dear friends the Remer family. It was a great time, and a really refreshing break. Highlights include:

• Reading all of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and most of Zanna's Gift by Orson Scott card (who I'm starting to think is an egomaniac) on the flight home Thursday morning ( Read more... )

As part of the ongoing Chicopee Party Series, we threw an All Saints Day party on All Saints Day--Saturday, November 1st. We were going to throw a Halloween party, and have plenty of scary surprises in store for everybody, but the church had a big Acts of Kindness event at Franklin St. and we didn't want to compete with that ( Read more... )

In mid-October, I visited Orlando to attend the Internet Network Management Workshop (INM'08). I recently got a paper accepted there, so the trip was on my advisor's nickel ( Read more... )

"What do you want to do with your life?" It's a question I've managed to avoid so far. Instead of deciding after college, I punted for another 5 years and decided to get a Ph.D. instead ( Read more... )