dj whitebread
Friday, August 15, 2008
Acknowledgments
First, I want to begin my thanking my wife, Carrie. Her love and support is unbounded. Specifically, I want to thank her for one thing that relates directly to this dissertation. I was working at IBM in 2001 when I was accepted into the doctoral program in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. I was somewhat hesitant to quit my job; I honestly had not expected to get in. I figured I would get into the Masters program and go back part-time.
Everything changed when I got that acceptance letter. I had been given the opportunity to pursue my dream that I had had since I was 13: to get a Ph.D. and become a professor. Still, I was not sure. I remember telling Carrie that I had been accepted. We were not dating at the time, but we were close friends, and she was so happy for me. It was this excitement that helped reignite my own dream and made me realize that we only get to live the dreams we follow. I remember telling her that I had decided to accept the offer, quit my job, and come back to school full time. She seemed proud and happy that I made that decision, and seeing her response filled me with joy. We started dating my first year of graduate school and got married two years later. It has been the best four and a half years of my life since March 13, 2004. I dedicate this dissertation to her, but she shares that line with two other important people.
My parents, Robert and Bobbie Riche, have always supported me throughout my life. I was not a tough kid or an athletic kid. I was a smart kid who liked to talk a lot. My parents always listened, though. My parents always encouraged me to learn more. I thank them for instilling in me the passion for learning that has pushed me this far. I also thank them for teaching me that doing the right thing is right, regardless of how much it may hurt or inconvenience you. Most of all, I thank them for their constant love; without that I most definitely would not be here right now.
I would be amiss if I did not thank my adviser, Harrick Vin. The most important thing that Harrick has taught me is to always ask the question, ``Why?'' It is the perpetual asking, and answering, of this question that sets us apart as scientists. I recently had the opportunity to talk to Harrick at length about his time here at UTCS. Not only am I forever grateful for the lessons he has taught me specifically, I am very grateful for the hard work that he put into the last 15 years to make our department a wonderful place.
There is a chance that I may be Harrick's last doctoral student. While on some level I am honored, I feel more sadness about this fact than anything. I really hope one day I hear that I am no longer his last student, because UT is losing a great teacher and adviser.
Greg Lavender, my co-adviser, deserves my utmost thanks. During several rough parts of my career here, Greg was there to remind me of the positive things and help to get my spirits up and to keep me going. Also, I thank Greg for introducing me to the research areas of programming languages and software engineering. I knew nothing of these things. Greg's instruction in these areas has helped me develop a passion for an entire area of research I did not even really know about when I started.
I would like to thank all of my committee members for their insightful comments and suggestions: Mike Dahlin, Don Batory, and Raj Yavatkar. I hope to continue to work with all three of these great researchers and teachers and to continue to learn from them as well.
I thank Lorenzo Alvisi for continuing to remind me why I want to be a professor.
There are five graduate students that I have had the honor of knowing during the time I spent working on this dissertation---I want to thank them now. Ravi Kokku and Jayaram Mudigonda were mentors to me, and two people from whom I have learned so much. Jeff Napper, Harry Li, and Allen Clement have become some of my best friends and have continued to push me to work harder and smarter. Conversations with a white board and these five people have helped to push many of the ideas in this dissertation forward.
I thank all of LASR. This research group has been an amazing place to work and learn. Seeing it develop from a relatively small group to what it is today has been a great experience. Further, I thank Sara Strandtman for keeping LASR running. Nothing would actually work without Sara.
Finally, I thank God for giving me so many blessings in life. Reconciling faith and science is a tough thing to do, and it is always a work in progress. I feel that God wants us to learn and never stop asking questions. Treating faith as fact does not do the beautiful mystery that is faith justice, and using religion as a tool to judge and demean goes against everything God teaches us. I believe that God gives us all two very important things: brains and love. I intend to use both of these to their fullest extent for the rest of my life.
Taylor Louis Riche'
The University of Texas at Austin, 2008
Labels: dissertation
3:17 PM |
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Limbo
I feel that I'm in a weird limbo right now. I have all the approvals I need, but I still have stuff to do on the actual document. It's an odd feeling. I think with these changes it will read pretty well. Today I hope to get two of the chapters redone, and get all of my illustrations made. Then I will spend tomorrow on the related work areas that I need to add and on polishing up the evaluation section.
Our new iMac is scheduled to arrive Friday morning by 10:30 AM so I am pretty pumped about that.
We are supposed to receive a quote about the guest shower repair today, so I really hope they can get that fixed tomorrow or Friday. I'll deal with the specifics of the master bathroom once we close the deal on the guest bathroom. Next week I'll at least have the time to go workout up at Pure Austin and take a shower there, which will be a nice change of pace from the shower at the gym on campus. Notice the use of the single article... "the" shower. Yeah, not a fan.
I am currently sitting in the discussion area on the corner of the sixth floor. I brought the laptop over here to work for a little bit. It's nice because it has a great view of downtown. I can see the capitol building, the Frost tower, and all the others. I love views.
Well, I'm going to dig into writing. Happy Wednesday!
Labels: dissertation, gregory gym, Pure Austin
10:13 AM |
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Process
I gave a defense presentation to my external committee member over the phone on Tuesday. It went well. I mean, obviously, it could have been much better. Considering I had just finished the slides at 2 AM the night before, there really hadn't been much practice. However, it ended up being more of just a guided conversation, anyway. My committee member had lots of good questions, comments, and suggestions on both the dissertation document and the defense presentation. So good experience all around.
Last night we helped Harry and Meg pack up their truck as they headed out this morning to start the long drive to California. I wish them luck, as the desert in the summer is not high on my lists of places to visit. ;) More so, we'll miss them here in Austin!
More work to do, more work to do. The end is getting strangely close. It doesn't feel real. When you've been working on one thing for seven years (and stating it as your goal for seventeen) it is hard to imagine the day will actually come. I swear I look at the checklist daily of forms that need to be turned in. My nightmare is that I don't graduate because some form is missing or I zigged when I should have zagged.
I am cooking some curried okra tonight. Should be interesting. Tonight I plan on writing. However, I am going to try and do it some place other than school to mix things up and to try and get my creative juices a flowin'.
Labels: dissertation, work, writing
4:39 PM |
Saturday, July 26, 2008
I'm still alive
I know I've been kind of quiet on the blog front. Been working a lot. I got a draft out to the committee this week, which was good. I still have a good bit more writing, as well as the defense presentation to work on. So, three weeks of solid more work.
We had an exciting morning, as Carrie's note describes. I'm glad she's all okay now.
I turned in my pink form on Friday, which means I'm officially on the books for doing a defense on Monday, August 11th at 10 AM in Taylor Hall 3.128. So the schedule for the three weeks is: On this Tuesday, I have a teleconference with my external committee member to do a run through my defense for him. I will get comments from him, and probably a few other committee members on the draft in the next week and write those in. I will also be continuing to work on my presentation and hopefully give several practice talks. After the defense, hoping everything goes well, I have until Friday the 15th to get the dissertation uploaded and all the required forms turned in to the Graduate School. Then... well, then I'm done. That is, assuming everything goes okay with the defense. I'm not counting my chickens until they hatch, if you know what I'm saying.
We've been following So You Think You Can Dance this summer. And I must say, at some point in my life I'm going to take hip-hop dance lessons. It just needs to be done, because I need to be able to pop-n-lock.
Okay, back to work... ohh, I have some cookies on my desk. Delicious!
Labels: Carrie, dancing, defense, dissertation, work
4:00 PM |
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Here it is
It is strange to finally be on this final step. I sit here with the beginnings of my dissertation in front of me. I have a lot of graphs, and a lot of skeletal descriptions of things. There are many parts that need many more details.
While this is somewhat imposing, that isn't what I wanted to discuss. I want to discuss how easy it is to get caught up in the code, and the experiments, and making graphs and all of these things. But all that is useless unless you can clearly describe to other people in written word why any of this is important. Here is the document with which I am supposed to do just that.
There are a lot of ideas floating in my head right now. Many things I know I need to get down into that document. I'm getting very close, yet, I still have probably one of the harder tasks left. It is finally completely in my hands, and now it is the time for me to step up and do it. Three weeks from tomorrow is the defense... three weeks and four days of this dissertation consuming me. The final push is the hardest, but it is necessary for me to do what I've always dreamed of doing: having a PhD.
Wish me luck...
Labels: dissertation, work
4:34 PM |
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
To Catch Up
Last Thursday when I posted seems like eons ago.
We did officially pull the paper. I was okay with that... the results just weren't happening. Friday I ended up not getting a chance to swim or bike, so I went into the triathlon on Saturday not having swam since last summer.
However, before that, we went to the ballet on Friday night. We got to enjoy the new Long Center for the Performing Arts as this was the ballet's first performance there. Very nice place, it is going to make a wonderful home for the arts in Austin. The symphony performed the music live, which was a nice touch. Don Quixote featured a large amount of point work, and it was pretty amazing to watch the women stay up on their toes like that for so long. The lead female dancer of the performance put on an amazing show of dancing; it was truly impressive.
Saturday morning was the triathlon. Basically, it went as well as could be expected for not exercising for two weeks and doing absolutely no running or swimming training. I felt really good on the bike, I could have pushed harder, but I was nervous about the run. I was also probably using way too big of a gear the entire ride. I forget that you really want to push an easier gear at a much higher cadence to keep the legs fresh for the run. The run was the most absurd two miles I've ever done. I felt like an old man just shuffling along. My body just did not want to run at that point. Oh, and the swim. Yeah... let's move on. We both finished and got it done, so it was nice to get that done and on the books. I definitely want to do several more this summer... I really want to do a triathlon where I actually swim the entire distance.
Harry's bachelor was party on Saturday night. The highlight was probably our time at the shooting range. I rented a .45 caliber Glock... that was fun to shoot. Overall we had a great time, though the giant meal of heavy, Salt Lick barbecue was a little much in retrospect. Sunday we ended the weekend with a showing of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Crude, ridiculous, and very silly... but I laughed the entire time.
I'm leaving for Baton Rouge early on Thursday morning so that I can make it there in time to do the Tuesday/Thursday training race out on river road. I really would like to get on the bike today or tomorrow to try and get some work in the legs so that it isn't a total shock come Thursday. I would at least like to postpone the inevitable drop for a little while.
The Giro is in full swing. So far it's been a good tour, though it's always sad to see so many guys break their collarbones so early. However, my fantasy team member Mark Cavendish took a crazy sprint today to bring me some quality points. He has made it clear that he may not stay in the Giro through the mountains to contest the later sprint stages. Hmmm, here's hoping he feels good and decides to stay in.
So the paper deadline has come and gone. It is sinking in that the next deadline in front of me is that of my dissertation. Finally, it has all come down to this. It's kind of crazy... to think this thing you've been thinking about for so long has finally arrived. There is a lot of work to be done, though, so I really need to stay pretty focused from here on out.
I hope everybody has a good week.
Labels: Baton Rouge, dissertation, Giro d'Italia, pro racing, Rookie Triathlon, training
2:44 PM |
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Campus
Usually, if you get to campus before 11 AM you can pretty safely find a parking spot near my building. Today, however, there is a 5K on campus, so parking is a little nutty, and they have some of the roads cut off. I am not going to complain about the 5K... I mean, people are getting healthy, that's cool. I've been part of a group that closed down parts of campus before on the weekend.
It just seems that for the past several weekends there has been stuff going on on campus that has restricted parking and access to the building. It's just been crazy. Texas Relays, 40 Acres Fest, the MS150, etc. I know once school finishes up here in the next week or two the only big even on campus will be graduation. And it's sort of a big event. Then the summer will be here. While summer is hot here in Austin, it means a nice quiet campus. A nice quiet campus for me to hide in a cave and finish my dissertation.
Labels: dissertation, parking
10:20 AM |
