Round Two: accepting the challenge

Last year around the beginning of March began a neat time in my life, one of the times when I was really excited about something. That time opened up doors for me, teaching me a bit of Java and some Python and that I can do a lot on an hour a day.

That period ended about June 1st even though I didn't realize it had ended until a few months later and didn't fully recognize it until perhaps last December. I am really glad I took the challenge that I did take. I learned a lot and I think I could do a much better job the second time around on the same project.

Today I read a comment on a Paul Graham essay that rang out as a challenge. Here it is:

I worked for startups all through my 20s, but now at 37, I, I find myself up against point #9.

9. Family to support

I'd love to found a startup, but having a wife, two wonderful kids, and a $500K mortgage give you a very different perspective on the startup lifestyle.

I imagine a startup incubator where the founders are provided with salary and benefits comparable to working for a corporation, and they are encouraged (forced?) to maintain a reasonable life/work balance, (The latter is probably the hardest to achieve; a startup requires an almost monomaniacal focus).

Well, I'm going to be 30 in less than a week. I have 5 children and a mortgage and I'm planning to complete a PhD. I want to publish my intention here to

1. continue to take great care of my family,
2. continue to progress on my degree and
   
3. start a company that I can be proud of.
   

I'm tired of people telling me that I can't.

I take this comment and others like it as a challenge and, having conferred with my wife and having prayed, I accept the challenge.

So here begins round two. I made a few mistakes in round one. Perhaps I can avoid them this time through.

1. My startup was a cool idea rather than something that I care about enough to sacrifice for.
2. I delegated my commitment to others. What I mean is that as I progressed I ran into things I didn't want to do. Rather than stay committed to making sure those things would happen I found others and hoped they would make the things happen. The delegation wasn't the problem so much as the relaxation of the commitment to make sure that they actually happened.
3. There came a time when I started focusing on tools instead of on producing results. Tools are important. But if you are going to do anything results have to be paramount.
4. I didn't talk to my target audience. I produced a product that I intended to sell to a certain group without ever actually talking to that group.

I've considered a lot of options. I can quit graduate school and start working. That doesn't feel right at this point. I can stay at graduate school and focus on it alone. Actually, for some reason I can't. I just can't seem to trust myself that graduate school right now is an adequate use of my time and my talents. Or I can go for it.

So I'm going for it. Wish us luck.

Inkscape

Physicists end up doing a lot of writing and presenting. It is fairly well accepted that something written by a considerate physicist should not only have text but should also have lots of nice diagrams and equations. Some would argue that a physicist making a presentation should have just about no text. The more theoretical ones would then ask for nothing but equations, charts, and diagrams. The more practical ones would maybe allow one or two equations but then ask that all of the rest of the talk be made up of charts, pictures and diagrams.

I've been using tools like OpenOffice, Windows Office, and LaTeX to make my diagrams. But I see these beautiful diagrams all the time in presentations and publications that tell me I've got to find something better. So I've asked around a bit and looked around a bit and no one has been able to give me an inexpensive answer: the guys who make the nice diagrams are all using Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw.

Well, I think I've finally found an open source answer to Adobe and Corel. Inkscape is one of the cooler programs to hit the planet. It is vector based and powerful. It is layered and has all kinds of operations and transformations that can be performed on different visual objects or groups of objects.

Simple interfaces are all the rage right now with every person wanting to be like Google. I like simplicity. But I have to say that Inkscape is more fun than simplicity. When you begin using it you will probably have to stare at it awhile before you can do anything cool. You will wonder why there are only four types of shapes to draw, squares, stars, and circles, and spirals. Open up a couple of the tutorials under the help button, though, and I think you may begin to fall in love. Transforming the star object alone may keep you entertained for 10s of minutes. Incscape is fairly intuitive and in some ways it is simple. But a better discription is that it is rich and deep. There are a lot of tricks to learn in there.

And then, after you feel that you are starting to get familiar with things, press Ctrl+Shift+X and boom! You have opened up the hood and have direct access to the XML format of your document in editable form.

Anyway, it's free, powerful, and fun. Check it out.

Doug

Herbie, blankies, and things

When I was 3-4 I had a favorite blanket. I sucked on it and some of the corners were pretty tattered. My mom repaired the edges and it never was the same after that.

Our kids still miss Sarah, our old '93 Ford Aerostar. They are fond of Sparky and Jonathan as well. But just like people can't replace each other perfectly neither can Sparky perfectly replace Sarah.

A lot of men find certain pairs of shoes or certain shirts that they just like. Even as they wear out they just want to stick with them.

I know that things are not people and won't ever be. But for some reason I think people are happier when they have a certain affection for certain things. What do you think?

Freedom, self control, and a baby

Setting the goal: A couple of weeks ago I had a talk with one of my advisers. I told him my concern, which was that it would be very easy to pass two years here and at the end realize that I am no closer to completing my PhD than I am now. What could I do, I asked, to make sure that didn't happen?

He wasn't sure of all of what needed to be done but he did have one suggestion. He suggested that I start writing papers.

So I'm going to do that. I struggled for a bit to get going until Monday the 9th. At that point I committed to try an experiment, which would be to write one page of scientific article each weekday for one month. (Actually, the goal is a bit more complicated than that--after a point I can spend time on figures and referrences and formatting for submission instead of on writing pages.) And I did it every day that week, just by adopting the rule that I wouldn't do anything else (even check email etc.) until I had finished each day.

Not keeping it, and the excuses were sane: The next Monday (two days ago) Gina had to go to the hospital at 10:00. As far as we knew the most likely scenarios were C-section or induction and we would be parents that day or the next. Anyway, with the large event impending I decided the day before that I would forgo Monday's page. Gina prompted me and tried to help me write but since I had made the decision to let myself go I didn't write. After a lot of time spent doing little extras to prepare Gina in case of an emergency C-section, the doctor came and wrangled the baby from a breech position into one that was head down. After a bit of monitoring the wrangling was deemed a success. We ended up being sent back home with the baby in its newly adopted head-down position.

That evening I got emails about working on a grant. I was to come up on Thursday to work things out regarding it. Well, working things out with two bosses is usually tricky. I decided I had better check email the next morning. Unsurprisingly I got an urgent email suggesting that I needed to get up to Los Alamos to begin helping write a grant that, if funded, will settle the financial side of things until after I graduate. That's a big deal. Luckily, Gina's mom is in town so I felt like I could leave Gina in good hands. I went up there. Between four hours of commute time and meetings with two different individuals I spent the rest of my day pretty handily. I let myself forgo a page yesterday as well.

Recommitting and learning about freedom: But 4 hours gives you a lot of time to think about things. I started thinking about taking responsibility to make things happen. I thought about taking control of my life and what that means. One thing that it means is not letting myself off the hook so easily.

I can't make a lot of daily personal commitments. Responsibilities to family and employers are critical and I can't take up the whole day meeting internal commitments to the exclusion of external ones. But I can make some. And there is almost always enough space to stick to them. Daily writing is an experiment. I don't know that I'll stick with it for good. But I'm doing it now.

Today it seemed like the baby wasn't moving and we went to our appointment early to make sure things were okay. The baby was okay. But it was turned back to the breach position. But before the appointment I had finished the page for today.

Tomorrow we go in expecting to have the baby before Gina comes back out because no one wants to turn the baby again only to have it turn again. The appointment is for the afternoon and I have to work on the funding proposal in the morning. But I believe that if I don't let myself off the hook I will be able to write that page.

And maybe after enough pages of quality science . . . maybe then I'll graduate. We'll see. What matters for now is the process--not the destination.

So much fun

Gina got me a ping pong table for a birthday present when she saw it at Walmart for $50. We took a few days to set it up and had it ready by this last Wednesday evening.

Today Denis, my friend from Russia, and Puff, my friend from China, came over with their special paddles and we played. First we played one on two, rotating around so that each person got a turn to be alone. Then we played one on one. Then one on two again and finally one on one. I was beaten once in every situation and I won once in every situation. It was so dang fun. Maybe life is actually about ping pong . . .

It would be a treat to play enough to offer a good challenge to Rob, James, Bart, and SamB. Watch out, boys. My chinese friend has some tricks to teach me.

We took a break to let the kids start learning how to play. They are still pretty short for the table and they are still learning how to hit and how to hold the paddle.

When it was all done and they had left Gina asked if it had been nice. I wanted to express my gratitude. I told her it was as much fun as I had had in this house. That got me in hot water. I had to explain that it wasn't in the same category as a lot of the other great things that have happened in this house and couldn't properly be compared.

One problem is space. We put up the table in the largest room of the house. Then we cleared that room of every bit of furniture. It was still small enough that the walls interfered from time to time with our game. Well, we may end up growing out of this little home at some point. Still, it's been great over the last 3.5 years.

Only two weeks and two days until the baby is due.

Doug