Flying Puppies

I just got back from New York a couple of hours ago. I flew on Jet Blue. Little TV's with live direct tv for everyone: Cool. Giving everyone crappy headphones that don't cover their ears so that in turning up the sound loud enough to understand the dialogue over the airplane engines, they also subject everyone around them to whatever they are watching: Uncool. Sitting within earshot of 5 people that are doing this: Very Uncool.

At the beginning of the flight, the flight attendent asked the woman sitting in the window seat next to me if she would be willing to trade seats with someone because that person had a pet in a box and someone sitting by them was allergic to it. Then the flight attendant asked me and the guy on the aisle if we minded having a pet on our row. Among the thoughts that raced through my mind: "Is the pet going to sit in that seat by itself? Is this person going to hold a pet in their lap for six hours? Is it potty trained? Are you serious? If I put Ed in a box on my lap, can he travel for free?" We both gave her a blank stare, paused, and then hesistantly said, "Um, okay." Luckily some other flight attendant brokered a seat-swap deal with someone else before my row mate could switch. In the end, our little row struck up a nice rapport and it was a pleasant flight.

I have to go home now and hand out Halloween Candy. Happy Halloween!

I've decided to restart my old blog

We'll see if I actually post a reasonable amount. But since I have very low standards for that other blog, I might actually do it.

:)

Groundhog's day?

Yesterday I had yet another discussion about how most people don't do their physical therapy, which lead very nicely into a discussion on people's horrible eating habits and lack of exercise--as well as how they are all surprised that they are overweight. Perhaps the thing that was odd about this conversation is I wasn't leading it...I guess that I did spark it what with my knee, but the guy I was talking to went from PT to lifting, gyms, people's eating habits etc. I had just gotten back from a 3 mile run (YEA! I can run again. Well I'm building up.) And I went to JJ&F's grocery to bet something to eat. (Heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, and some gummy bears). Anyhow, one of the guys who works there asked me if I had just worked out and off the conversation went.

I wonder if there are just some conversations that some people are going to have over and over again. Maybe for you it is about the second law of thermodynamics, or perhaps relativity...but for me it seems to be about working hard in physical therapy, working out hard, and eating right. Maybe eventually I will move on to conversations about the existance of black holes and the creation of the universe...but somehow I doubt it.

For fun, what conversations do you find yourself repeating with randomly diffrent people?

I'm Too Young for Back Pain

For the last 10 days, my back has been hurting. It's like a pulled muscle or pinched nerve in my lower back, on one side, right below my waist. I know that I should go to the doctor, but I just signed up for a new health plan and I didn't get my ID card until last week and I don't have a personal physician yet and it's hard and whine, whine, whine.

I've tried Advil. Nothing. I've tried Yoga - but I can't figure out how to contort myself into a position that stretches that particular spot. I also tried laying on my back with tennis balls under me while I scoot around so that the tennis balls massage the muscles on the sides of my spine. Ok, I'm getting desperate. I'm going to try a heating pad when I get home tonight. I've had this before and eventually it goes away, but in the meantime, it's not getting better and I have to sit on an uncomfortable airplane seat for 5 hours tomorrow. Maybe if I'm too sore to sit for long periods of time, I can skip the first session of the conference on Saturday morning (see rant below) and sleep in without guilt.

The Early Bird gets a Headache

I'm having problems getting up lately. If my bed gets a point for every minute that I sleep in past 8am and if I get a point for every minute that I'm up before 8am, the score for this week so far would stand at:

Bed: 332
Me: 0

I'm going to a conference on the east coast this weekend and it starts at 7am on Saturday. WHAT THE &*$#????? Did they forget that they invited people from the west coast? Do they not know that 7am Eastern Time = 4am Pacific Time? Do they not know that professors in my department don't come to work until 10am? And that's when they're NOT jet-lagged.

At least I don't have to present until 1:30pm, so I can nurse my "I'm-not-supposed-to-be-up-this-early" headache with a diet coke all morning while I try to wake up enough to function.

Postscript (Sunday, Oct. 30): I just finished the aforementioned conference and I have to admit that it didn't start until 8:30am on Saturday (and noon on Friday). I'm not sure where I got 7am - there is a conference at Berkeley this Friday and I think that one actually starts at 7am.

Can't. Stop. Watching. TV.

Between my new dedication to working while I'm at work and my TV addiction, I'm afraid that my blogging has really suffered lately.

I got Dish TV 10 days ago (or rather, Ed signed me up for it while I was at work one day) and now I find myself wasting hours glued to the TV. I start watching a show that catches my eye, and then I can't stop. My DVR (Tivo-like thing) can record on two channels at once, so I surf through the channel guide gleefully telling it to record everything that catches my eye. Tonight it told me that I have already recorded 62 hours of TV. 62 HOURS! I can't watch 62 hours of TV. I started deleting. Bye, bye 5 episodes of "La Esposa Virgin" (I am not going to start watching a Spanish soap opera to practice my Spanish.) See ya later 10 episodes of various Star Treks. Hasta la vista Law and Order.

I really don't know what's come over me. Heather had TIVO last year when I lived with her and this didn't happen. I just taped a few Star Treks and Law and Orders and I would watch them on fast forward with the closed captions on (I can read fast). Unfortunately, this machine doesn't seem to have that feature. Although it does let you keep watching your show up in the corner of the screen while you surf the Guide to see if there is anything more deserving of your attention.

I just have to keep myself from picking up the remote in the first place, because one peek and I'm gone.

Putting Parkinson's Law to Work for You

Parkinson's law states "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Or more generally, "the demand upon a resource always expands to fill the resource." How can you put Parkinson's law to work for you? By using the Law of Procrastination, which states "don't do anything until the following equation is true:

Time required to accomplish task = Time left until it has to be done."

Keep in mind, however, that the Law of Proscrastination only brings lasting happiness if you also obey the Law of No Guilt, which states "you must not think about a project or feel bad about not getting started on it in any way, shape or form at any time until the equation above is true."

Working Hard

Last Friday I decided to keep a log of what I'm doing every minute of the day at work. Even bathroom breaks get recorded: 4 minutes - potty break. I figured that if I did this for a couple of weeks, I could better see how I'm using my time and how I could be more efficient. (Because I don't feel like I've been getting much done lately. Somehow every little task seems to stretch out into hours of alternating between working and engaging in highly distracting non-work tasks.)

So I'm at the end of Day 2 of OCD record keeping and I've gotten more done in the last two days than in the last two weeks. It turns out that the very act of recording my activities makes me work WAY more efficiently (because I don't want to write down "web surfing and eating dry cheerios - 2 hours"). Ed pointed out that it's like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. That was a pretty good observation, but not nearly as good as the last time I worked quantum physics into a conversation:

Ed: (name withheld to protect the innocent) says completely contradictory things. They're so contradictory that I can't understand how she can even believe them both at the same time.

Me: Oh really? Was she trying to tell you that an electron is both a wave and a particle?

Berkeley Time

Every activity or function at my church starts at least 10 minutes late (except for Sunday services that start on time, even though most members trail in over the next 10 minutes). Of course this has become an old joke - "Is that 6pm Mormon time?" someone might ask. And lots of groups have this little joke - I've heard people refer to "Jewish Time", etc. So when I got to Berkeley and heard people saying that everything starts 10 minutes after it's scheduled, and calling this "Berkeley Time", I assumed that they meant that, as in most organizations, everyone shows up late to everyting. But no, they told me. If you are scheduled to teach from 1pm to 1:50pm, that means that you really teach from 1:10pm to 2pm. If you show up at 1pm, the previous class will still be in there.

At first, I thought I was being punked. Show up ten minutes late to my classes? Riiiggghhht. When I found out it was for real, I just wondered, why?

This convention applies to everything, not just classes. Meetings, workshops, seminars, and everything else start at ten minutes after the hour. After being at Berkeley for two months, I've come to the surprising conclusion that this system really helps people to be on time. There are always a few people who just don't get it and always show up at the posted time. But at the meetings I've been to, almost all of the people are there a few minutes before the meeting starts.

My theory is that this funny timing convention gets people to things on time because it changes how they think about the 10 minutes before the meeting: I know that a meeting scheduled for 1pm really doesn't start until 1:10pm, but in my mind the time between 1pm and 1:10pm is really meeting time, so I don't mind using it to walk to the meeting and I leave my office at 1pm and show up a a few minutes early. If the meeting really started at 1pm, I would feel like any time that I had to use walking over there before 1pm, was MY time, and I would leave at the last second and almost always be late.

So there you have it. Another example of how framing matters.

Research

A student came to my office to ask me some questions about the homework and then she told me that she liked my class and asked if I was teaching it next semester. I said no, we only teach during one semester. She seemed really surprised (s stands for student):

s: but I told all of my friends that they should take this class from you.

me: thanks, but I'm only teaching during the fall this year.

s: what do you mean?

me: well, I teach this semester and then next semester I can focus on doing research.

s: are they sending you back to stanford?

me: no, I have a full-time job here.

s: so why don't you teach next semester?

me: because a big part of my job is doing research. and I don't get much done when I'm teaching. that's what I'll be doing next semester. all of the professors only teach for one semester every year so that we can do research.

s: it must be nice to get the summers off

me: actually, I'll be doing research. RESEARCH.

I know it's hard to fathom what accounting professors might research. If you watched me all day, you might mistakenly think I must be researching web surfing. But really, I'm thinking up brilliant research ideas.

(insert name here) needs

My brother and his friends are doing this cute thing on their blogs, and I felt like joining in. You search google with "(Insert your name here) needs" and list some of the best ones that come up.

Devin needs lots of repetition and needs tasks broken down to one or two steps (SO true!)
Devin needs to be less nerdy than she was in her tryouts (Also probably true.)
Devin needs his daddy, and Nicole needs you to show her that you will cross any desert, swim any ocean for her. (I just had to include that entire sentance. It was too perfect. I know it's potentially stealing one from Nicole, but it did start with Devin needs!)
Devin needs a black female partner
Devin needs twenty-thousand dollars (Wouldn't that be nice?)

:) Your turn.

Another haircut

So in late July I got a haircut. I asked for an "A-line bob." I was so nervous that he didn't understand the "A-line" part that he even drew it out for me to feel more comfortable. A beautifull angle with the front longer. Okay. Good. So what did I end up with? A bob where my hair was *shorter* in front. (Although if it was completely sopping wet and I tugged on the front, as he apparently did when he cut it, it did seem *slightly* longer in front.) Now I normally don't splurge on haircuts, but this was a seemingly good salon and one of their more senior (and hence more expensive) people.

After that experience I re-grew my hair and yesterday I went to a cheaper place (ie. a semi-nice salon where the cuts are $30-$50 instead of $50 up) where I figured I could boss them around more and if it turned out badly at least I hadn't spent a fortune. It sort-of worked. Basically I went in, told the whole story and said "I want an A-line bob (indicating angle with hands). Leave as much length as you possibly can in the front, but cut the back shorter." She moaned and groaned and complained the entire time that the front was too long. I was happy. That meant there was a decent chance I was getting the cut I wanted.

Today I inspected my new cut properly for the first time. It actually looks pretty good. It's *still* only barely longer in the front, but it is longer. So it looks good.
On the left side of my head.

On the right side of my head the front is shorter.

Sigh.

I'm going to let it be and once it grows out *again* I'll try some other place. But this is definetely getting to be annoying.

Seriously, is it so hard? A Bob. bob. but with an angle. I think I might just go to supercuts next time. They couldn't do worse, could they? Or could they...

Ebb and flow....

Why is it that work always seems to happen all at once? I am trying to decide if this is a particular function of my job, my personality, or a commonality for everyone. Partially it is my job. Last week was consensus. We had a big consensus meeting that I was incredibly busy preparing for all week... Serious after-hours prep in fact(although that was partially caused by the fact that my car was getting fixed and so I carpooled with Chris all week--so I tried to live Chris hours. That was so tiring!
Partially it is probably my personality -- I feel the need to do every project/job the moment I receive it or can. Hence times of extreme busyness can be followed by times when I am done. And since, unlike Chris, I am not good at making up work for myself (hence never would have made a good researcher) I do run out.
Perhaps this is a trend that is similar for everyone? Or perhaps only to people who tend to prefer to do projects -- work with an ending point? What do you think. Will I always be oscillating between times of extreme busyness and boredom, or will I someday find a way to smooth out my ebb and flow?

Publicity Photo

Yes, I will soon have a publicity photo. That's what they call it here. It's the picture where I'm supposed to look like a real HBS professor. Is it convincing? I keep asking Susheem if I look like a real Professor, and apparently every once in a while, with my suit and leather briefcase, I get really really close.

So anyway, I'm teaching now! Overall it has been a lot of fun. Very tiring and time-consuming, but fun. The students are all really bright and have interesting experience. They ask good (sometimes too good) questions. And the case method is fun - I get to turn things back at them so often. But class is so unpredictable with the case method. Yesterday I had my least structured class ever. The discussion just went in directions I hadn't expected, and there was no clear way to reorganize it. It's okay though - I'm pretty sure they still learned stuff. Probably. Something.
:)

Actually, I have heard through a couple people that some of my students have been saying very good things. Yay! It means so much more when they're saying it to someone else.

Having to go in to work and having a clear task every day is pretty different from non-teaching-professor life, but I really like it. You know, for variety. Not permanantly.

(Oh, and if any of you know how to make the picture smaller without making it look grainy, let me know how. I know that I can set the width to a certain number of pixels, but then the pic just doesn't look as good. Thanks!)

Bizarro

Here is what I saw for 2 hours yesterday afternoon when I wanted to blog. I wanted to blog really bad. And I wanted to read other people's blogs really bad. It was very upsetting to have my blog taken away from me like that.

Today on the way to work, I had my left hand on the steering wheel and when I pushed a button on the radio to change the station, the automatic door locks engaged. The button that is supposed to activate the door locks doesn't work (I have to lock with with the keyless entry remote) and hasn't worked for a long time. My car is evolving.

Our New Place

Here is a picture of our new couches. We had to go with a sectional because our house is too ridiculously small to have a separate couch/love seat. They're microfiber and they're pretty comfy, but I have the feeling that they won't be tough enough to hold up for very long if kids enter the picture.



Here is the view from the hallway toward our kitchen table (yes, it's a banquet table with $3 lawn chairs from the drugstore around it). We'll get a new table eventually, but it's not very high on the priority list (getting a new car before mine dies is the first priority at the moment).



I really need Heather Craw to come out and tell me how to decorate our house. Everything is white (doors, door and window trim, window blinds, walls and ceilings), so it looks really plain and unadorned. I feel like I should put up some window treatments and hang tapestries on the walls or something.

Killing Time

First there was google, a search engine that was leaps and bounds beyond its nearest rival that made finding information on the web oh so easy. Then Yahoo games. Who knew that so many people liked to play boggle online? Next came CNN - what better way could you waste your afternoons? And of course, CNN has to be followed with Slate for a more substantive follow-up on the daily news. Then came the blogs - every morning I check my seven favorite blogs to see if there is anything new/interesting. And don't forget TheMovieSpoiler and Apple movie trailers - yes, it kills your appetite for actually going to movies, but it's a lot quicker and cheaper.

But my new web-surfing passion, the grand daddy of them all, the time killer to kill all time killers, is Wikipedia. Yes, it's an online encyclopedia (yawn) but it's really cool. The articles are up-to-the-minute current and are hyperlinked to related articles/concepts. If you have a tabbed browser, it's a dream. You can keep opening cool-looking links in background tabs as you read an article and then read the related articles and the related links. I spent 2 hours reading about science fiction books, the Fermi paradox and Von Neuman probes this afternoon. Everything you can think of is there, from popular novels (now I don't have to read The Da Vinci Code) to detailed science and math concepts (check out supernovae), to up-to-date information about current events (read all about Harriet Miers or the guys who won the nobel prize in physics today).

The only problem with it is that sometimes the pages load slowly (it's run by a non-profit group and there are no advertisements or fees for using it, so they have to rely on donations to upgrade their hardware and bandwidth). I will be sending them a donation soon.

Dirtball

No, it's not the name of our new pet pot-bellied pig -- it's my car. It hasn't been washed since my dad washed it when my parents came out for our wedding. It's not dirty for lack of a bucket, hose, spray nozzle, liquid car washing soap, a car washing mitt or a squeegee, because I have all of those things. I just haven't been in the car-washing mood. If I knew where a self-serve cash wash was, I would go there and hose it down, but I don't feel like figuring out where one is. Maybe Ed will wash it when he comes this weekend after he finishes cleaning the spiders and spider webs off my porch. We're thinking our next car might be brown.

Who's that girl?

I spent two hours yesterday working on changing my name. I already got my new driver's license (after a miraculously short 20 minutes at the DMV) and my new social security card (which required a visit to the social security office). At the bank I had to bring in my marriage license and a photo id with my new name. Credit cards were easy - I just called them up and two days later a card arrived with my new name on it.

I also have to contact my cell phone provider (partly done), insurance agent (done), employer (done), brokerage account manager, utility company, internet provider, water company, garbage collection company, the alumni associations of every school I've attended, the U.S. passport agency, and many more that I'm sure I will think of eventually. The biggest hassle so far? Frequent flier programs. Both Southwest and United Airlines are making me photocopy our marriage license and send it to them in the mail. That's right. If you want to steal my credit card, just call them up, pretend to be me, and tell them that you have moved and changed your name. But don't even think about trying to steal my frequent flier miles, because they're on to you.