The eye of the hurricane?

Perhaps I am over dramatizing this linear systems course, but it really is (unfortunately) a major portion of my life right now. I've got the second take-home midterm tomorrow and this entire last week has been consumed catching up on all the homework that came fast and furious over the last few weeks. Like every night from 7-12, and 10 hours on Saturday working with others on it. And I simply cannot let myself set it aside and accept a grade less than I'm capable of, so the hours get poured in...

Anyhow, its Sunday night and I finally finished up most of the problems, so its time for a good night's sleep before devoting another significant chunk of hours to the take home midterm tomorrow. And its frustrating because these are hours that could have a much more tangible, productive result if they were applied to research. The research is going well, and the potential funding source for my research was impressed with the talk my advisor (Hod Lipson) gave last week in DC, and they want the full 10pg proposal in two weeks. Since I am the one heading up this project, I am of course putting together the info/visuals for these presentations/proposals. It's a lot of work.

You might have read about our research group this week if you follow scientific news in any capacity. We made national news for some work that just got published in Science (prestigious scientific journal). You can read a news release here. Its some pretty cool stuff... although it was all done before I got here (so I didn't contribute).

I ordered the parts for my work computer last week. The lab has enough resources to work with, so I was able to put together quite the serious CAD devouring, dual-core PC that should take anything I can throw at it. So that's been another "distraction" this week: reading up on all the latest computer technology and spec-ing out a nice system. The parts should get here in the next few days.

...And that's literally been pretty much my life the last few days, aside from eating and sleeping. I've got no plans for Thanksgiving weekend, so it should be a pretty quiet (hopefully productive) time. Its the same deal as fall break... everyone I know here is taking off to spend the long weekend w/ relatives several hours away. Of course I've been invited along when it came up that I wasn't going anywhere, but they're all headed off for the entire 4-5 days, and that's well past my limits of imposing on families I don't know. Oh well. I'll be headed back to Seattle for Christmas in less than a month...