HotNets in the Big Apple

HotNets and New York

I'm on the Bolt Bus, waiting to leave New York now. I have about a 4 hour trip ahead of me, so I figure that this is the perfect time to write my entry.

HotNets went pretty well. I was much less nervous about this talk than I was about my SIGCOMM talk, but I think that's understandable since the SIGCOMM one was far more important. I think the talk went reasonably well, and there were a few people interested in the work, but I feel like the community as a whole hasn't really bought the whole "systems on OSNs" idea, and probably won't until it actually happens. In some sense, though, that's a good thing, because it means that when we eventually write that paper that it will be even more important.

There were a few very interesting talks. I think these were my favorites: Michael Walfish's talk about which entities in the future Internet should be able to control the path that a flow follows from a source to a destination (their conclusion is everyone on the path), and Michael Piatek's talk which identified how much performance gain P2P apps could really get from favoring intra-domain traffic to the exclusion of inter-domain traffic (not much, despite earlier work such as Ono that suggested otherwise). Another talk I found very interesting was Saikat Guha's, about serving adds locally for performance and privacy, but I have some issues with their assumptions so I'm not convinced that it's quite there yet. From what I hear, Dave has another, similar solution, so we'll see how that goes.

Perhaps more interesting than the workshop itself was an odd occurance during Bryan Ford's talk. He revealed an (I admit) amusing point about excessive encapsulation in some Outlook protocol, and then all of a sudden my back was completely wet. Someone (who shall remain nameless; he's already suffered enough for this) was apparently taking a drink of water and did a spit-take at the joke, all over my back and the screen of my laptop. On the plus side, I've now memorized this person's name and face. I guess that's one way to meet people at networking events. Maybe I should pay it forward...

Getting back to the more Carmichaely side of things, my side effects became more pronounced while traveling, I suspect because I wasn't as able to keep myself hydrated as well as I usually do. I've had aches, joint pain, soreness, nausea, tiredness, edema, and probably some other side effects that I've mostly forgotten by now. The nausea was the worst, since it comes right after lunch when I take my pill, so it was right in the middle of HotNets. Food usually helps, but the food there was so terrible that I felt better going with the nausea.

After HotNets was over, I was still in New York for two more days, but I knew I would be leaving during the day on Sunday so I figured I should get most of my sightseeing done Saturday. Before I say anything else, I have to say this: I love the layout of Manhattan. It's so logical that I immediately was able to navigate both the streets and the subway, I didn't get lost once, and I was even able to give people directions the four or five times they asked for them.

I started with downtown. I went to Wall Street first, then the WTC site, then down to Battery Park to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, then back up to the Bodies exhibit (my favorite part of the trip), then up a little further to Brooklyn Bridge. Then I stopped by the hotel to change, and went up to the upper east side and made my way down along Central Park. Then I went to Rockefeller Center, the Nintendo World store, and Times Square. I was going to make my way to the public library, but it started to rain really hard at that point so I cut my trip short at Grand Central Station. Then later that evening I thought the rain had died down a bit, so I went and had a drink at the Stonewall Inn. Unfortunately, the heavens opened up again as soon as I left the place, so I went back inside and waited it out with a few sodas. Then I just went home for the night. This morning, I hit Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building before getting on the Bolt Bus. And of course I did some shopping and saw a few other places, but those were basically the landmarks. Here are my impressions:

• Wall Street: Really cool. I think I'm glad I went on a Saturday when things were so quiet. I especially liked the cathedral at the end of the street, as if it were passing judgment on the street and its going-ons.
• WTC site: Too much construction going on. I didn't see squat. But there was still something kind of eerie about the huge open space in the middle of the city.
• Battery Park: Bleh.
• Bodies: Incredibly cool. It's an exhibit of real human bodies that have been opened up and put on display. Morbid and educational... how can you go wrong? They also have a number of abnormal body parts on display, including an enlarged spleen (it was still small potatoes compared to my mighty spud, though). My favorite part, though, and this is still somewhat related to Carmichael, was the exhibit on the circulatory system. They injected some substance into the blood which was bright red in the arteries and bright blue in the veins, and which after some time would harden. After it hardened, they chemically removed the rest of the body. The result was an amazing display of all of the arteries and all of the veins of an entire body. As a kid, vampires were my favorite monster, and then (somewhat independently) I fell in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now I have a blood cancer. I guess Spike was right about blood (I promise, one of these days I'll get around to talking about Buffy quotes that I find particularly relevant to Carmichael). I wasn't supposed to take any pictures, but I managed to snag one of the enlarged spleen. I just couldn't resist. I'll post it when I get home.
• Brooklyn Bridge: I don't know, it's a bridge?
• Central Park: Really underwhelming. I thought I was going to be more impressed by it, but it felt more like wasted space.
• Rockefeller Center: I bet it would be romantic to go ice skating there if you were in a movie. I'll pass on that, though. It was cool to see 30 Rock though.
• Nintendo World: I liked Nintendo World, but I think Nintendo and I are on the outs right now. Maybe I'm too old for it, but I don't think that's it. I think it's just that they have given up on their original fanbase. They now only target people younger than me and people older than me. I really wanted to buy something from there, but everything was so tacky. The one thing that I found that I could see myself wearing was a wobbufet t-shirt (the t-shirt just had his face on it), but they only had them in youth sizes. At least I got a picture of R.O.B.
• Times Square: Kind of felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy; people flock to this landmark because it's filled with advertisements, and it's filled with advertisements because people flock to it. I don't know what I was expecting though.
• Grand Central Station: To be honest, I was kind of wet, so I didn't really pay attention. The only thing I remember thinking is that the food court reminded me of the food court at Union Station in DC.
• Stonewall Inn: Another landmark where I don't know what I was expecting. It's just like any other gay bar. The people there seemed even more shallow and empty-headed, though that could be due to many factors; I'm older now and disenfranchised with the gay community as a whole, I was kind of depressed at that point from exploring the city alone the whole time, and sampling bias. I went there around 9:00 and was only there briefly, so I only talked to the bartender, two older gentlemen obsessed with finding out my age (I think they didn't believe that I was over 21), and one other person who thought that Maryland was somewhere between New York and California. I knew I'd just be bored back at my hotel room, but the place really had a skeevy vibe to it, so I figured I'd have better luck finding company in the rain. I don't know why I thought that Stonewall Inn, birthplace of the gay rights movement, would be somehow different from the other gay bars and clubs that I've been to in my life, but there you have it.
• Madison Square Garden: I might as well have skipped this.
• Empire State Building: Even though I had a lot of time to kill before my bus arrived, I decided that it wasn't worth it to wait through the line just to have them go through all of my belongings at the security checkpoint. Instead I found the nearest comic shop and got Buffy Season 8 volume 5, which gave me something to do for the last hour or so after my PSP Go's battery died.
  

All in all, it was a fun trip, but it would have been more fun if Ted had come with me. Dinner alone every night without easily accessible wi-fi is not my idea of fun.

Paranormal Activity

Well, I don't think I'm going to get back to sleep any time soon, so it seems like a good time for a blog entry.

Things have been pretty quiet here ever since my last doctor's appointment. I've been preparing for my Bond Breaker presentation at work, and I'll be heading up to New York for that tomorrow afternoon. At home, I've mostly been trying to play as many video games as possible because I have had a serious backlog ever since the PSP Go came out. I'm currently working on Wild Arms XF (which is pretty good!) and Demon's Souls. The latter really bothers me because the title is so stupid and they really made some terrible game play decisions. Unfortunately, it's for the PS3, so that means I'll need to keep playing it until I get the platinum trophy (or risk breaking my current streak!).

This weekend was somewhat busy due to a day with Ted's friends on Saturday and then lunch with his dad on Sunday. The biggest thing of note was that we went to see Paranormal Activity with Kevin on Saturday night. I really enjoy scary movies, so I had little doubt that I would enjoy it, but I'm pretty sure that this movie is the scariest movie I've ever seen. It's not that there are a lot of things jumping out at you suddenly (though there are a few). Instead the movie relies on a steady build of tension as the events unfold and escalate to an inescapable conclusion. The part that makes the movie really scary, though, is the fact that it seems so realistic and that it all takes place in a fairly normal couple's bedroom.

After watching the movie, you're left with a bunch of haunting images of events from the movie that would freak the crap out of you if they happened in real life. Then when you try to go to sleep at night, your imagination gets the best of you and you really start to think about those events and worry more and more that something like them could happen to you. You remind yourself that the paranormal isn't real, but it's a small comfort since you can't shake the images from your head and they seemed so authentic.

So, that being said, I've had trouble falling asleep the past three nights. Not a lot, mind you... eventually I find a new topic to occupy my mind and have no trouble falling asleep. But the movie is usually the first thing that comes to mind and so it takes some time to get past it.

Tonight, on the other hand, I had no trouble whatsoever falling asleep. On the past three nights, as is typical, Ted fell asleep before I did, but tonight I fell asleep first. I think that could have been the difference. I'm not quite sure what happened, but all of a sudden I found myself bolt upright in bed. Ted was already sitting up and screaming in genuine terror. I grabbed his shoulder and arm to try to calm him down and he started looking at me and continued to scream, at me, for about five more seconds. I finally calmed him down enough to get him to tell me what was happening, and he said that he must have heard Shabby knock over a glass or something. Vaguely in the back of my head I felt as if I had probably accidentally tapped my night stand, which has three glasses on it sitting side by side so they would clink together, enough to make a noise but not enough to wake me up at least.

Needless to say, this whole incident freaked us both out quite a bit, but I think we're calming down enough now to go back to sleep. Immediately afterward my heart was racing really fast and I was actually a little worried about it, but it's fine now. I guess I'm just surprised because I didn't think Ted was really having any after-effects from the movie like I was, but I guess he must have been...

Dearly Departed

On Tuesday I got some bad news from my friend and labmate, Dave. His mom passed away. We all knew that she had been having some troubles, recently, but I at least didn't know that it was life-threatening, so it kind of came as a shock to me at least. It turns out that it was a recurrence of breast cancer. Most of "the lab" -- Bobby, Bender, Cristian, Aaron, and myself (and obviously Dave) -- attended the funeral, in part to be there for Dave and also because we had actually met his mom at his thesis proposal. I didn't really get to talk to her at that time, but she seemed like a wonderful woman, and that first impression was reinforced at the funeral service. I haven't lost someone as close to me as she is to Dave, so I really can't understand what he must be going through right now... all I can do is be there for him if he needs me.

Unsurprisingly, this is the first funeral I've been to post-Carmichael. Part of me wants to say that it affected me differently than previous funerals, but I don't think it would be entirely honest. I remember going to the funeral of Kirstin, a girl I went to elementary school with who died in a car accident, and thinking at the time that it could have just as easily been me in that car. The same thing happened with Jordan's funeral after high school. As much as I go to these events to mourn the passing of the people I know, I feel like I also look at them as a reminder that one day I too will die, and I'll have one of these services of my own. Maybe I've just been watching too much Dead Like Me, but I really kind of wish that my death is something spectacular. It would be even cooler if I died doing something heroic, but modern life does not leave much room for heroism. No, in all probability, I will die of something mundane, but with any luck it won't be because of Carmichael, and it won't be any time soon.

The world marches on past Dave's loss... less than an hour later I found myself at the doctor's office. Today's appointment was a little shorter than the previous ones had been; I probably could have gone in to the lab for a few hours afterward, but between the funeral and the rain I just didn't feel like working today. My next two appointments (in two and four weeks) will just be a matter of getting blood drawn, and then they'll call me if there's anything unusual. Then in six weeks I'll have a full appointment again, and they'll do a FISH test to see details about Carmichael. Until then, as I have been anticipating, my CBC is looking very good across the board, so in some sense I'm doing better than I've done in a really long time. Hurray.

PP (post... post): For the record, when I die I want to be cremated, and have my ashes spread somewhere cool, like in an active volcano, space (including, but not limited to the moon), or Antarctica. If those are all too difficult, then a cave would suffice, but it should be pretty deep at least.

Another lazy weekend

Ted and I just had another lazy weekend. I'm still feeling great, but rather than take advantage of that fact I spent the entire weekend playing video games. I didn't even get any work done, as I had planned, so I'd better just buckle down and really work tomorrow in the lab. I'm pretty sure Bobby will be expecting a report from me about our SIGCOMM plans -- and possibly also about the Bond Breaker slides which I haven't touched -- so I'd better be ready. Maybe I can think about SIGCOMM while I work out tomorrow morning. I'm planning on starting my Wii Fit workout routine in the morning as well.

As for this weekend, I finished "Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?" and have moved on to Wild Arms XF for the PSP. It's pretty fun! Also this weekend, Ted and I have started playing LittleBigPlanet again. We previously took a hiatus because our PS3 memory was wiped, but over the course of this weekend we've unlocked most of the items in the game. Really, the hard parts are over, so now it's just a matter of time. When we're done, we'll be able to make some stages again, so I'm looking forward to that. It really is a fantastic game.

Sorry to keep it so short, but I'm tired and I'd like to get some sleep tonight (unlike last night). I'm currently looking forward to Thursday so that I can get confirmation that my CBC is looking good...

SIGCOMM Pitch, Wii Fit Plus, Harley, and Dollhouse

I was a bit frustrated yesterday by the SIGCOMM pitch meeting. Before we begin working on papers for each big conference, we always have a pitch meeting where we throw out our ideas to try to flesh them out a little and figure out who will work on which project. I think Bobby and Neil were disappointed that we weren't ready for the pitch meeting, for me especially since unlike everyone else I haven't had a paper deadline to work toward. I've been busy with other stuff; being in the hospital for starters, doing a few small assignments for GeoMAN, making the HotNets camera ready and slides, preparing for Syschat (though it's understandable that they would forget this since I didn't actually end up giving that presentation), and trying to read a few papers. These tasks have been a little difficult for me, especially on certain days like yesterday and today when I get stuck in a loop where I think to myself that I'm being unproductive, which then causes me to be unproductive, which then makes me think about it, etc.

Anyway, Persona won the best student paper award last year, so there's a lot of pressure to make the follow-up paper for it. I just haven't really had any ideas that have anywhere near the same importance as Persona, and thus I feel a little inadequate. Couple that with the fact that I didn't find out about the SIGCOMM pitch meeting until last Friday, at which time Bobby told me I needed to work on the iOwes project with Dave, plus I needed to make the Bond Breaker slides for Syschat on Wednesday still, and it's easy for me at least to understand why I wasn't ready for the pitch meeting. Oh well. I suspect in the end that the point of the pitch meeting was really just to light a fire under our butts anyway, not to make us feel bad about not being ready for it, so I'm not going to let it get to me.

Yesterday evening I got to use the new game I bought on Wednesday night: Wii Fit Plus. I really liked Wii Fit, but found it to be basically useless for working out because you had to spend so much time just pressing buttons to get from exercise to exercise. Now you can set up entire routines of both strength training and yoga, and this is absolutely perfect for me. I'm hoping that this coming week I can start getting up early in the morning to do a workout before I head into the lab, but we'll see. My first workout convinced me that over the course of my treatment, I've really let myself get out of shape and I need to work on it. A few of the stretches felt like I pushed myself a bit too hard, and some of the exercises put more pressure on my previously gout-ridden toe than I'd like, but other than that, Wii Fit Plus seems like the perfect way to get some real exercise at home.

After my workout yesterday evening, Ted's college friend Harley came to visit us. We went to my favorite restaurant for dinner, Siri's: Chef's Secret, and just chatted about various things. We talked about how I was getting along, and Harley and "Grant" (Ted's name before he came to UMD) caught up on old times. Harley seemed to have this doom and gloom mentality, as if I would drop dead any minute, and that I needed to be out living life to the fullest. I don't know that I necessary disagree, but I like to think that I'll live for at least another 30 years, as some Gleevec researchers are predicting. Plus, by then, they'll probably have a surefire cure.

Today I tried to flesh out some of the ideas we brought up after the SIGCOMM pitch meeting, but I was really distracted, it was really cold in the lab (it has been for a while), and it was such a beautiful day outside. I ended up leaving early. I figure that in a month or so, I'm going to start spending all of my time in the lab, so I can afford a little bit of down time until then. One thing that probably would be nice is if I did my thesis proposal largely based on the planned SIGCOMM paper, and got that over with in November some time, but we'll see if there's time for that. It might be tough with the looming SIGCOMM deadline and the HotNets stuff I still need to take care of, plus there's always GeoMAN... sometimes I just find myself to be stretched too thin to be of much use on any project.

Of course, there was a ray of sunshine tonight: my favorite current TV show, Dollhouse. Tonight's episode was quite good, and I have to say that Enver Gjokaj is a talented and adorable actor. I want to see him in some same-sex engagements! If the Dollhouse were real and I were filthy stinking rich, I'd hire him for all kinds of stuff.

Here's hoping Dollhouse stays on the air for the entire season at least! Poor Joss just can't catch a break on TV these days, even though he was born for the medium...

Forbidden Fruit

I really like this blog entry's title, but to explain why I will have to take a slight detour before I get to the main point of tonight's post. Bear with me.

When I was 15 or so I kept a "blog", only this was before they were called blogs. This was before LiveJournal, heck, it was before OpenDiary. I actually made my own online diary and didn't share it with anyone for a really long time, and it was incredibly helpful during the coming out process because it really let my friends know what I was feeling. It's ironic that I am so open and honest online (and was so even that long ago) when you consider that my area of expertise is now in privacy in Online Social Networks. After writing in my diary for years, my friend Kara discovered OpenDiary and we both started using that. Then I discovered a hole in their security that allowed me to steal anyone's password, sent them a helpful e-mail to let them know that they had a serious problem, and promptly got my account deleted. Including all of my diary information that I had, by that point, lost all of my local copies. That was my first experience with losing data in the cloud, so you'd think that I would have learned my lesson by now. Google has treated me well, though, so I'll continue to use their services.

Anyway, getting back to the title of this post, I distinctly remember that I used this title before in my old diary when referring to a straight guy that I had a crush on. (I still have crushes on straight guys from time to time, but I certainly don't obsess over them the way I did in high school, which is why you won't see such an entry in this blog.) I find the title of this post so funny because it applies very literally to my current circumstances.

Grapefruit.

I bought several food items from Bytes cafe -- the shop in A.V. Williams, the Computer Science building at UMD -- both this morning and this afternoon. Both times I grabbed a bottle of juice. The shop has basically four selections for juice that I would drink: orange, strawberry kiwi, cranberry, and grapefruit. I tend to favor orange juice and strawberry kiwi, but I get the other two occasionally. Or rather, I used to. One of the very prominent warnings for Gleevec is that I'm not allowed to have grapefruit in any form. You'd think it wouldn't bother me much, since I'm not really that big of a fan of grapefruit juice, but every time I open that refrigerator there I get this terrible craving for the drink that I just can't have.

Incidentally, there are a number of other things I'm not supposed to have, such as Vitamin E and St. John's Wort, but they're mostly easy to avoid (though I tend not to get Naked juice anymore, which is good for my wallet). There is one more thing: garlic. Garlic has been shown to (note: I'm paraphrasing from my understanding of the science behind it) affect the ability of the body to metabolize the Gleevec, so I'm supposed to avoid it as much as possible. This is of course nearly impossible since there's garlic in everything, so I've mostly stopped worrying about it. Grapefruit, however... I'm just going to have to suck it up.

As a final aside for tonight's post, even though I've been feeling great the past few days, I've had a few side effects. There's something strange going on with the pressure in my ears, and it comes and goes, but it's no big deal. I also have a little sore on the side of my mouth, and I had a nose bleed today. I was actually kind of glad for the nose bleed, honestly, because it confirmed my suspicions. I mentioned to Katrina on Monday that I was feeling great and jokingly said that I was thinking of cutting myself to see how quickly I healed (I think I freaked her out with that one a bit) because I suspected that my blood cell counts were trending toward normal. My nose bleed healed very quickly today, so I think my platelets are doing great. I feel like I have much more energy and that I'm more awake, so I bet my red blood cells are hanging in there too. And now I'm (successfully) fighting off the cold that Ted's trying to give me, so I think even my white blood cells are working! I'm actually kind of looking forward to my doctor's appointment next week after all, despite learning today how expensive my hospital stay really was.

I'll just say this: it cost more than I make in a year, and my health insurance is covering most of it, but based on my understanding of the statement from the health insurance company, it looks like I'll be expecting to pay a few thousand bucks. It's a good chunk of the money I've saved up over the past 8 years, but it's a small price to pay to take good care of my health.

Dinner with the Ulman Cancer Fund

Today I was invited to go to a dinner with some folks from the Ulman Cancer Fund, a cancer fund specifically for young adults (15-39). I didn't really know it at the time, but the dinner was mainly to get sorority members involved in fundraising and service for the Ulman Cancer Fund, so I kind of stuck out like a sore thumb as one of the 6 guys in the room; and 3 of them were there as members of the organization. I'm used to standing out, though, and that's basically the topic of my post tonight.

For starters, the dinner tonight was not geared toward me, but it was supposed to relate to me. We heard at least three stories of young adult cancer survivors, only one of which was delivered by the actual person (she happened to be the same person who introduced Obama when he was on campus recently). Whenever I hear these stories, I kind of feel like a phony, though. Treatment for Carmichael is very simple compared to all of these other cancers; I just take a pill every day or so. So even at this basic level, I already feel that I don't fit in.

Then Brock, the main speaker, went on to talk about all of the problems that young adult cancer patients face that other demographics don't, such as having difficulty paying for college or having to worry about infertility. The former I've never had a problem with (and my advisor, Bobby, really looks out for me in that regard), and the latter is not something I'm concerned with. If anything, it makes any decisions I might have had to make easier: if Ted and I actually want to have a biologically related baby at some point, I suspect we'd have him be the father. In some sense, I think that cancer support is heterosexist, but I can't really complain about it too much since I don't really need the support and when you start taking intersections of minority groups like that you quickly get down to a tiny group of people. For example, I'm guessing I'm the only young adult gay man who uses Linux with CML at the University of Maryland.

At the meeting tonight, I couldn't help but be drawn back to the days when I was involved with the gay community at UMD. I thought activism was so important, and that I needed to be a part of it. It took a few years, but I realized that I've got way more important stuff going on in my life than these issues. That's not to say that activism isn't important, both for gay rights and for cancer support, but it's to say that my talents are better suited elsewhere.

I think that this last point really highlights some irony in my life. I really feel like I've had a much easier time dealing with Carmichael because of everything I went through as a teenager when I dealt with being gay. There are actually a lot of parallels. When I received my initial diagnosis, it felt like my world had ended, but I have to admit that I felt the same way when I first uttered the words, "I'm gay," in the shower when I was 14. Then there was the problem of telling everyone I know and love that my life has changed; when I was young, it was a long and painful process to tell everyone, but I really learned from that and was able to deal with it quickly as an adult.

Really the toughest part is coming to terms with your new identity. I was an ordinary guy as a kid, and then all of a sudden I realized I was a gay man, and that was not an easy transition to understand my life in relationship to that new identity. After adjusting to my new identity that first time, it became very easy to adjust to changes to my identity in the future. So naturally, I adjusted to being a cancer patient very quickly, and life returned to normal very quickly. Sure, there are some issues still, but there are still issues with being gay, too, so life is pretty normal these days.

In the end, there are a few new interesting issues at the intersection of these two aspects of my identity. The first is that the Red Cross does not allow gay men to donate blood, which most likely delayed my diagnosis. That really irritates me, but I'm not sure how to effect a change in their policy or even that it would actually be a positive change from a purely statistical standpoint. The second is that my attitude toward gay marriage has changed somewhat. I no longer feel that it can wait and that it will happen eventually; I want to get married, and although I plan to live a long and happy life, being faced with my own mortality makes me want to get married sooner rather than later.

Fortunately, it could be legalized in D.C. very soon, so I may get my chance. Maybe I should be saving up money...

Out of my funk

Today was good. I managed to get up and go to the gym, and was able to burn 70% more calories than I was ever able to do before my diagnosis and treatment. I feel great in general, which makes me think my blood cell counts are starting to correct themselves.

I was totally lucid at work and even fairly productive. I almost finished the first draft of my Bond Breaker slides; this is the paper I will present at HotNets in New York on October 22nd or so. I'm looking forward to it, especially since I've never been to New York before.

It's time to start thinking about Sigcomm... something I've been dreading but that I think will be good for me. It looks like I'll probably be working on the iOwes paper with Dave, which is good, because I won't be the lead author (I don't know for sure that I could handle that right now) and because it's still very much related to OSNs, my area of research. I just hope I can handle the 80 hour work weeks that are to come in my not-too-distant future.

Normal Again

I felt pretty normal today. That probably wouldn't sound like an accomplishment to most people, but this is the first time since I was diagnosed with Carmichael that I've really felt that things were normal again.

Today was a lazy Sunday, just like any other lazy Sunday I've enjoyed with Ted for the past 5 years or so. We got up around 8 o'clock (that's late for us), and Ted graded papers while I played "Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?" on my new PSP Go, which of course I played with a PS3 controller on our nice TV. At 10:00, I switched to just the PSP Go while Ted watched This Week. Then we took a shower, and then I played more of my game. Around noon, Ted made lunch and we watched a DVRed Saturday Night Live together. Then I played my game for a long time, until right before dinner time when we started watching Across the Universe. We took a break in the middle for Ted to make a delicious dinner, and after we finished dinner and the movie, Ted watched 60 minutes while I did the dishes. Then I just played "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" for the rest of the evening since I had finished my other game.

It was nice. The only time I really thought about Carmichael was when I took my pills, and that was pretty brief. I've had no side effects to speak of today, although I have had some cramps in my hands; while this is a side effect of Gleevec, it is much more likely that this was caused by the frustration of playing "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" It's fun, but frustrating.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will be just as good, because I have a lot of work to do by Wednesday. Wish me luck.

Work Frustration

I think my delight at having my spleen shrink has worn off. I was pretty depressed yesterday, so depressed that I left work early. The only task I had to work on yesterday was to make some slides for HotNets, and I just couldn't make myself work on it. I'm sure that everyone has their off days at work, but this was not the only such instance for me.

In fact, I feel like it's been going on for a long time. I really feel that over the past 4+ years in grad school I've become dumber, lazier, more distracted, and more frustrated when it comes to my work. This might surprise some people, since I've actually been very successful in the past two years; see my publication record on my web site, though it's missing my latest IMC paper and the fact that Persona won the best student paper award. However, I find myself working twice as hard to do half as much.

Until now, I just blamed this feeling on the aging process. Now I have no choice but to question if Carmichael has been to blame for some of it. Have I not been getting enough oxygen to my brain? Or do I just want something to blame on my own failures? This inability to tease out what the effects of Carmichael are and what are "normal" changes to my body is incredibly frustrating. Which of these changes can I prevent, and which are inevitable?

These are the thoughts that went through my head as I walked home. It really weighs on me, because I've always prided myself on a job well done, and without that, what do I have? I'm really worried about Sigcomm this year; heck, I'm worried about finishing this presentation in time for Syschat on Wednesday. In the end, I suppose the only thing I can do is to try my best, as tacky as that sounds...

Doctor's Appointment

Today was Thursday, and that means that it was time for an appointment. The appointments have been a little frustrating for me. Back in February my car died, so ever since then I've just used Zipcar to get around. This has worked very well for me; I can get to most places by foot, bus, or metro. However, I live in College Park, and the Greenebaum Cancer Center is up in Baltimore, about a 30-45 minute drive away.

It wouldn't be so bad to do with Zipcar, except Zipcar is pay-by-the-hour, and I spend a lot of hours at the GCC. My typical appointment goes like this. Someone in my family picks me up around 10 and I get to GCC about 15-30 minutes before my appointment time. I sign in, and then almost immediately get my vitals checked. Then I have to wait until my appointment time, at which time they draw some blood and tell me to wait in the other waiting room. And I wait, and wait, and wait, while they do a CBC (Complete Blood Count) test on my blood. Then I see my doctors, Dr. Singh and Dr. Rapoport, and they tell me that my blood counts are low but that that is to be expected. For a while, I would then have to go fill a prescription for Gleevec, but now that I've been approved for the patient assistance program the Gleevec is shipped directly to my house. Back when I had to wait for the prescription, I would be at GCC until 4:30, but now I'm "only" there until 3:00 or so.

The CBC is pretty interesting. I started out at 480 thousand white blood cells per millimeter cubed (which I will from now on denote as 480 WBC). They put me on Gleevec and Hydroxyurea (which is what most people think of when they think of chemotherapy), and that entire week at the hospital I dropped by about 50 WBC each day. I was at 70 WBC when they discharged me, and the next week I was in the normal range. Now I'm actually a little low, on white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets, you name it. Today they gave me a procrit shot to try to convince my body to make more red blood cells. Since my WBC is so low, they also gave me the flu shot and advised me to get the H1N1 shot when it becomes available.

Also today, we had a bit of a snafu. My brother came to the appointment with me, intending to get some blood drawn to test if he's a bone marrow match in case we decide to do a bone marrow transplant in the future. This of course confused the nurses --- they took his vitals, drew my blood --- in short they mixed up a lot of information and failed to take my vitals or draw his blood. They eventually corrected the mistake after Dr. Rapoport came into the room and jokingly mentioned that I had put on a little weight; at this point I told him that they never took my vitals, and then questioned how he believed the numbers he had in front of him. After all, I weigh about 150 pounds and my brother weighs 180, and I'd think it would be pretty unhealthy to put on 30 pounds in a week. In any case, we eventually got the matter sorted out. The thing I found so weird about it is that we knew there was some confusion, so we each checked the names on the sheets and they had Billy's name for the vitals and my name for the blood. Weird, huh?

Despite that eating up most of my day, I did manage to have a lot of good times today. In particular, I was one of the lucky "few" to get a Google Wave invite, and playing with that has been really fun. Though, Google Wave is all about collaboration, and my friend invites haven't taken effect yet, so there's not a lot to do with it yet. I did create a list of video games that I plan to purchase. I normally keep such a list in Gmail, and reply to the mail to update the list, so Google Wave really is exactly what I want for that. I will likely also move my "command line" folder to Google Wave, and probably share that with my friend Katrina as well. That folder is what I use to store useful command line calls that I would otherwise forget, and again, since I edit them and append to them, Google Wave seems like the perfect place.

Then, much later, I also managed to snag a PSP Go. I'm especially happy about this because NISA is having a 50% off deal on six of their games, five of which I plan to buy, this week only in honor of the Go's debut. Since I didn't own a PSP previously, the PSP Go is a great buy for me, especially now that I'm spending entire days at a time on the go waiting in GCC for my appointment with the doctors.