Summer is quickly coming to a close. Technically, I guess summer is officially over, as I've been in full before-the-semester meeting mode. Campus-wide presentation, school-wide meeting, department meeting, math faculty meeting, meeting with new faculty, meeting as student club faculty advisor... It's just that time of year again.
My classes are about as set up as they're going to get. My MATH 489 course has things laid out for the first half of the semester, but since it's a data science capstone course, I really don't know how the second half will play out. It's a small class, and so there's the possibility that everyone will want to work on the same project, but they may also want to work on their own. So I'll have to feel that one out and make some decisions as we get into the semester. But the other three courses are completely ready to go. The Canvas page is built, the notes are created and printed, the activities are created, the assignments are created... So I can ease off the gas and get in a day or two of rest before launching into the semester.
I need to bring the 3D printer back to campus. I didn't get around to fully repairing it after it got a little burnt out from pringing the PPE at the start of the pandemic. A repair probably entails buying a new hot end, but I'd want to do a bit of tinkering before doing that. Also, the budget situation is up in the air because of the pandemic, and I'm not sure whether we'll even want to spend any more money on this thing. It's an old machine with old components, so it's not surprising that something broke. Part of me wants to convert it into a mini-CNC machine, but that's a bigger project than I likely have time for. But if I'm going to go through the work of fixing it, it's worth thinking about what else we can do with it before it completely falls apart on us. If the parts are cheap enough, I may just pay for them out of pocket and just go all-in on the tinkering. I guess that will depend on how much time I end up having this semester for side projects.
From a productivity perspective, this summer has not been as productive as usual. I never did get around to looking at the ATMI data. I didn't work on the revise-and-resubmit for the article I was working on. I didn't do anything with making videos. I didn't convert my textbook from LaTeX to ConTeXt. But it's fine. Summer doesn't need to be productive for it to be good. I got a bit of travel in, heading out to California quite a few times and making it up to see some family in person for the first time since the start of the pandemic. And that was good way to spend some of that time.
I should probably go and clean up my office. Although I haven't been in there very much in the last 18 months, it wasn't really a space that I had ever gotten fully organized in the first place. And so it can use a bit of intentionality and effort. It feels a little strange to say that, since I'm still not going to be on campus that much given the current COVID situation. But it seems like this is not a bad time to really go through and rethink my organization scheme. Among other reasons, I'm not sure how much I actually remember about my current organizational scheme. So that's a little higher up on my think-about-doing list. I don't know whether it will actually happen.
Earlier this month, I attended the InterVarsity faculty conference. It was held online, and we only met for a few hours in the afternoon for three days. It was good to have that type of virtual community for a little while. It was a helpful time of doing a bit of reflecting and focusing on a few things. The focus was on Nehemiah with a theme of "Rebuilding the Ruins." A theme for me was just being focused on the goal and not getting distracted and/or intimidated by circumstances. I did miss being physically present with people, and physically removed form my normal surroundings. There is specific value for me to get away to a different place, as it helps me to find a different type of rest.
The COVID situation is continuing to go sideways on the broad scale. The South is being hit especially hard because of a combination of low vaccination rates and political leadership pushing back against practical steps to reduce the spread of the disease. However, Southern Nevada seems to be coming down from its peak of this wave. The reporting on CCSD seems pessimistic, with at least one school closing and going to full remote, but it doesn't seem to me to be the type of unmitigated disaster that Florida and Louisiana seem to be facing. But I feel bad for the teachers and administrators that are navigating the difficult waters with probably insufficient support and probably less than ideal levels of communication. It's probably just going to be another messy year, and then multiple messy years to clean it up (assuming that we eventually get the pandemic sufficiently under control).
The government is putting out the idea that we should be getting an 8-month booster shot in response to the spread of the delta variant and waning levels of immunity. That would put my booster shot in mid-December. I'm certainly not opposed to getting re-poked.
If you've read this far, your reward is that you'll learn some information that's only semi-secret. It's not like I haven't been telling people, but it's also not something that has been posted on Facebook yet, and probably won't get officially posted there for a while longer. And it's not really real until Facebook knows about it. (And no, this text doesn't really count. Only about 20-25 people even click the link, and probably not everyone who clicks it reads the whole thing.) A part of me wants to keep this in the semi-secret state so that people who know will know, and those who don't will just find out later. On July 17, I proposed to a Joan and we're getting married in a couple weeks in Palo Alto. Life is good.
A lot of my general lack of productivity this summer is the result of spending a lot of time with her in California, and trying to go from proposal to married in about 6 weeks. You might be looking for the longer story, but it's 12:30 AM right now, and I don't feel like typing for another 30-40 minutes to get it all out. Sorry. I'm sure I'll get to it eventually.
Other news: No piano playing. Project Infinite Basil is creeping along. I've gotten quite a few batches of basil out of it, and I'm still making more plants (and finding better setups for it). Thor is doing well. There seems to be only one hummingbird that is visiting the feeder. The hummingbird camera caught a white cat coming over the fence the other day. That's the third cat that the camera has caught, though I haven't seen either of the other two cats recently. Still making chilaquiles with regularity, though the hummus-making has dropped off. The other day when I went for curbside grocery pick-up, I ended up with 3 dozen extra eggs. So I've been eating more than my usual quantity of eggs, and I don't mind it one bit.
