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...