Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books

07 June 2003

Ah, finally. Got a couple of hours of work in on the thesis document; let's hope that's enough inertia that I can pick it up later today. Now, I'm going home to bed.

From the oh-really? dept.: "Bush is a Republican. I'm a Democrat. In fact, I'm seeking the office he holds. But at this moment there's not an inch of distance between us." --Joseph Lieberman

Posted 7:48 AM [+]

Well, I've gotten some coding done, and started a bunch of experiment runs, so I can't say I've been totally slacking.

But I also just wrote a page on my various knitting projects. I should really be writing my thesis....

"I knew if I was willing to sell out the rights of a whole group of Americans to get reelected, then I'd wasted my time in politics." --Howard Dean

Posted 5:00 AM [+]

*sigh*

As predicted, the week and a half that I lost to graduation and the conference has caused me to come to a complete stop on my research and thesis. Frustrating. Now I'm in that "having a hard time getting started again" mode, but I really need to get going.

As for my thesis, and defending it: I'd been saying "late June" for a while, and privately had a self-imposed deadline of 17 July---because I wanted to have defended before the IMSA reunion on the 19th. As a nice compromise, I'd been thinking maybe 9 July. But the international ACL conference is that week, and my entire committee will be there, so that's no good. And I need to get a thesis draft in a full month in advance, so I can't do it before the conference. In fact, even if I want to defend as soon as they're back from the conference, on the 14th, I'd need to get cracking on the thesis draft, as I'd have to have that in by... next Saturday. Have I mentioned that I haven't exactly started writing?

Ugh.

So here I sit, reading notesfiles, knitting, learning to crochet, chatting on the phone, blogging, anything to procrastinate. I suspect once I get started, I'll be fine, but...

I've told myself I'm not leaving the office until I've gotten started again. I might be here a while.

"This is amazing. You've run into somebody who seems to be a complete loon, on the Internet of all places." --Neal Groothuis

Posted 2:00 AM [+]

04 June 2003

Well, I got my master's degree and flew off to Edmonton. I'm back from the Canada trip now (travelogue and pictures forthcoming), enjoying better health and enduring worse weather than at any point *during* the trip. Ah well.

I just now got back from the Dean Meetup, where I met about twenty Rhode Islanders who really, really want to see Howard Dean elected as our next president, for all sorts of reasons. It was immensely encouraging. Unlike the people I met during my stint in the Nader 2000 campaign, these people were not (by and large) born activists with a bunch of causes. And despite finding each other ultimately through the Meetup website, they weren't just a bunch of tech-savvy geeks, either---they were just a bunch of folks who are sick of the government, sick of being "led" by someone who is desperately trying to be just "one of the guys"; they want to have a leader, who will do the right thing, even if unpopular, and occasionally give us bad news---then give us a prognosis and a treatment plan, so that we can work together and solve the problem as best we can.

Please help if you can. We *can* win this.

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." --Hermann Goehring

Posted 9:30 PM [+]