Year Number Four

My fourth, and probably second-to-last, year as a graduate student has begun.  Hopefully the earthquake and hurricane from the previous week aren't omens of things to come.  I don't get to teach this year, mainly so that I can focus on my research and go to conferences like the one in Pittsburgh in October and possibly one in San Diego in mid-November.  If I go to the San Diego conference, I may get to visit my aunt and uncle in Albuquerque on the way back.

Anyway, since it apparently has been about a month and a half since I last updated this thing, I guess a status report is in order.

• The move is completed, as many of you have seen.  I also finally got the move-out voucher from Graduate Hills last week, so that lease is ended with no damage charges.  Looks like those pictures I took weren't needed after all.
• On the subject of pictures: during the cleaning for the move, my cell phone fell into a bucket of water.  Fortunately, after a night of drying out, it worked the next day, but since two years had elapsed since I got it, I was able to replace it just in case.  Thus, I now have a cell phone with a camera, QWERTY keyboard (the one without was more expensive for some reason), and Internet capabilities.  This last feature came in handy for
• Hurricane Irene.  We lost power here for about 24 hours, but I still got to check email.  And I still am adjusting to having water without electricity.
• I have had another date since the last post, but nothing is going to come of it.
• I have watched Frederick County politics devolve into corruption that even the DC government would shake its head about.  The county commissioners are now proposing that instead of county inspectors, developers would hire their own inspectors to inspect new buildings.  Yeah, that's not a conflict of interest at all.  Maybe the General Assembly will consider legislation allowing for recalls of county commissions in the next session.
• And time to rant about CNN: CNN.com recently had a poll asking people if they believed the US is in a recession.  By the definition, the country is not.  However, about 80% of people think it is.  Guess what, CNN--it doesn't matter that the majority of people think we are in a recession.  If the economic conditions do not meet the requirements of the definition, we are not in one.  So I guess that means 80% of the respondents to the poll question do not know what they are talking about.  Of course, a better question to ask would be "Do you think the United States will soon be in a recession?"  That to me is a reasonable question to ask as a poll question.  Chalk it up to another case of the "news" media screwing up our political system.  Okay, rant over.

So, that is my life over the past month or so in a nutshell.  Not very exciting, but productive.