So I'm back in California again living with a friend of mine instead of a bunch of interns. There's lots of cool people out here Damon, Jason, Ben, Amanda, Josh, and Mira that I know of so far. And I know the area now so there's sure to be loads of fun stuff to do. So far we've made a Napa run, seen the Pixies at the Warfield, and hung out in Palo Alto. This weekend is Live 105's BFD, which has a lot of good bands this year, and I've also got tickets to Wilco at the Greek on Saturday.
On the downside, Amanda fractured her tibial plateau and may have torn her ACL so hiking in Tahoe, backpacking in Tuolumne and the Trinity Alps, and summiting Shasta may be on hold. If you're interested in doing any of that stuff and you're in the Bay Area let me know.
On the work front, I'm trying to get ready for my oral qual in September and continue working on the Parallel Boost Graph Library as I have been for the last year. My boss at Sandia went on an 'entrepenurial leave of absence' to work for a startup, so I'm more or less bossless right now. The project is continuing however and there's no danger of my job disappearing. I did get a couple of papers out of this project (I don't think I can publish them here since they're copyrighted by the conferences but they're listed in my C.V.). One of them was at Information Processing in Sensor Networks, so I got a free trip to L.A. I thought I would really hate L.A. but it turns out the city is really awesome, its a collection of small cities/neighborhoods each with their own unique flavor. I stayed in Westwood by UCLA, but visited several other areas. I never made it downtown, which I'm told is kind of a dump. The one thing I don't like is that because its so spread out, you have to drive everywhere in L.A., unlike S.F. where I don't think I've ever actually driven into the city.
Anyway, off to BFD. I'll be in the Bay until the middle or end of August, so if you're around and you want to hang out, drop me a line.
So I went climbing with Jeremy and Chris in Yosemite on my bum shoulder, and miraculously it managed to hold up all weekend. We stayed on fairly moderate stuff, but it even felt solid on some of the 5.8 cracks we did. Maybe I won't have surgery after all... On Saturday we headed for Cathedral Peak (5.7, 5 pitches, 10,940 foot summit) at 3AM to get there before the crowds, the approach was supposed to take 2 hours and get us from 8500 feet to 10,300. I was worried about the altitude, but after spending two nights in Camp 4 at ~5000, we all felt great. The climb went pretty quick initially, by the time we were at the second belay we had seen 6-8 parties but were ahead of most of them, we thought. On the third pitch we ran into a roadblock at a 5.6 chimney. It took 45 minutes for the two parties ahead to clear it, and the congestion only got worse from there. A climb that should have been done by noon ended up taking until 5PM. Kudos to Chris for leading the whole thing with a broken toe, he seemed to be in excruciating pain for the last 3 pitches, which when revealed garnered him sympathy from every party we encountered. On the way up we were passed by a pair of free soloists, and for the first time, I decided that they probably had the right idea. The summit was awesome and turned out to be worth the wait, and the parties below us who we hung out with at the belays turned out to be pretty cool. I wish we could have moved quicker and linked in a summit of Eichorn's Pinnacle (5.4), but it was late and Chris was obviously in too much pain. We ran directly from the summit to my truck and drove almost non-stop to Livermore. Having been up since 3AM, the last 2 hours were definitely a team effort, but thanks to Chris and Jeremy keeping me awake we made it back alive.
After dropping Chris off at the airport at 6AM, and going back to sleep for a few hours, Jeremy and I went to Castle rock for a few hours with Damon and screwed around before heading to Palo Alto to revisit some of Jeremy's old haunts for dinner. All in all, it was an exhausting but eminently enjoyable weekend.
I've put up a lot of pictures I've accumulated over the summer, the only ones that aren't up are the ones I took on the drive out, and the ones from the most recent climbing trip. Due to the fact that I'm a lazy bum, I have not bothered to create thumbnails or setup PHP to create them on the fly, so if you're browsing on anything slower than an Internet2 connection, it could be painful, sorry...
It looks like I'll be back in Bloomington on August 30 for an while, since that's when classes start. Hopefully this will be my last 3-class semester, I'll have all the course requirements fulfilled for both the Ph.D. and the M.S. after this semester, so I think I'll cut down to 1 class per semester if I can find interesting ones, otherwise I'll just take research credits.
I heard that Sarah headed off to Tokyo, she called before she left but unfortunately I was in Yosemite and didn't get her call for a few days. If you read this Sarah, good luck, I'll email you soon.
Finally, my dog (Rifka) died last week at my parent's house in Louisville, the doctor thinks it was Leukemia, but she didn't really get sick until a day or two before they had to put her down. She was 10 years old, and we always used to joke that she was going to have a heart attack because she was so scared of everything, I guess we were wrong. For a dog her size, 10 years is probably about right, and I'm glad she didn't suffer much.
So instead of planning something grand for my 4 day 4th of July weekend, I elected to chill out for a weekend. I ended up going dancing at a pretty nifty club in the City on Saturday, I was kinda sketched out about the people living in their vans out front in the shadow of an abandoned warehouse, but the club turned out to be pretty cool, and I was even learning to salsa until the $3 margaritas took hold, at which point I spent all my time trying to avoid the pair of middle aged Spanish chicks hitting on me.
Sunday I discovered that there is indeed a good life to be lived in Livermore at Emily's party, unfortunately I re-dislocated my shoulder playing volleyball (of all things, man do I feel like a wuss) at this self-same party. I tried to be a man and go climbing at Castle Rock on Monday, but I was too worried about my shoulder popping out to lead anything and I couldn't climb anything overhanging. I did get in a few chimney and dihedral routes, and a really awesome slab/face route with nothing but smooth 1/4" solution pockets for the first 2/3 of the route, the guidebook rated part of the route 5.8 and the rest 5.10c so I once again wussed out and did it on toprope.
As for the shoulder situation, I think I'm going to see the doctor who did my dad's knee and get his opinion, but I'm really leaning towards having surgery at this point. I went all the way through rehab and the rotator cuff was stronger than the one on my good shoulder, my overhead press was back up to almost bodyweight and my bench was comfortably above 300 lbs., so I felt pretty safe in proclaiming myself recovered. Then something as trivial as blocking a volleyball serve was able to dislocate it. I'm sick of not being able to trust it, and worried that its going to give out at the wrong time and really hurt me at some point. I'm hoping that it can be done arthroscopically (little holes are better than big holes). If you have recommendations on what course of action to take, or what doctor/surgeon I should go see, drop me a line. Until I get healthy, I think I'm going to try to advance my career as a professional gambler, or maybe just do a whole lot of cardio and go peak-bagging.
So you may have noticed the hiatus I've taken from posting. It's mostly due to the fact that I was driving to California for a week, then Comcast decided to be a bitch for 6 weeks and wouldn't hook me up with high speed internet access. In combination with my crappy cell phone (I just ordered a new one 10 minutes ago, on Verizon's network so it has a chance of working in Bloomington) if been almost entirely disconnected, and it was actually sort of nice. So if I missed your calls, email, etc. sorry, there was too much fun stuff to do around here to bother taking care of mundane details, like obtaining functional communications. My dead laptop hard drive didn't help the communications bit any either. After buying a new hard drive from Q.E.C. ("Numba One Computa Store", no really) I realized that my Sony Vaio won't boot from just any external CD-ROM, it has to be a Sony brand CD-ROM, those bastards. That problem is as yet unsolved, if you can contribute a functional external Sony CD-ROM email me, I've been too lazy to go to Frys and buy one to use and return.
So what's so great to do in CA you say? Well, I've been up in the Sierras around Stanislaus two weekends (pictures forthcoming). I spent a weekend in Yosemite Valley (thank you Sandia for paying for my National Parks Pass), more pictures on the way. I went to Tahoe last weekend and stayed with a friends parents in Carson City when I wasn't in the casinos or lounging on the beach (no pictures here, I was too busy gambling). I played in a No Limit Hold 'Em tournament on Sunday and did pretty well before my pocket Jacks got beaten by pocket Queens, costing me a big chunk of my bankroll. I discovered another game I really like as well this weekend, Craps.
Another weekend, my roommate and I spent a night partying in the city at DNA Lounge, I've never seen network access terminals at a club that was even remotely cool, but this place had 'em and I thought it was a pretty happening place (although I've been living in Nashville and Bloomington for the last 4 years so my opinion is probably pretty worthless). Unfortunately bars in the city stop serving at 2AM, which means you only get about 2.5 hours of drinking time if you show up at the club at a reasonable hour. The place was still hopping when we left at 4:15 though, leading me to believe that perhaps there were other substances at work ere *cough*E*cough*. I reaffirmed the fact that I am not so hot at meeting people at clubs unless I've had a _lot_ to drink, so I think I'm going to try to stick to upscale bars with good music from now on, the kind where you can actually hear what other people are saying.
Fortunately Livermore has a couple of bearable bars for weeknight drinking. The Rock House has $2 pints (including Fat Tire and Guinness) on Thursday, and the Livermore Saloon has a bar and a poker room in the back. I really like the fact that California allows poker rooms to operate so long as the management has no stake in the outcome of the game (i.e. the rake is fixed), and I intend to play in some more tournaments once I find out which places aren't shady (the dealers at the Livermore Saloon play when they're not dealing, kinda shady).
As for the rest of the time I'm here, I still need to learn to surf and get in some multi-pitch climbing (although I did get to do some bouldering in Yosemite), and a Vegas trip is definitely on the horizon, so if anybody wants to meet me there, drop me an email.
Well, Spring Break has been less than stellar. A couple of guys from the department and I headed to the Red River Gorge on Friday afternoon and after freezing all night (it got down to 26 degrees and I forgot to bring a sleeping bag liner) we headed out to Fortress Wall. It was a beautiful day and we got a lot of climbing in. That is until I managed to dislocate my shoulder on a 5.9 I definitely should have been able to send. After what Chris described as a series of "primal screams" I bailed on the last climb of the day and we headed back to Miguel's, the pizza joint / climber's campground where we were staying. We woke up the next morning to some drizzling rain and decided to head for Long Wall where the overhang would hopefully keep us dry. We didn't get much climbing in due to a combination of exhaustion from climbing so much and not sleeping well since it was so cold, injury, and environmental conditions. We decided to head back that afternoon and got back to Bloomington Sunday evening.
I finally sucked it up and went to the doctor yesterday and they told me basically what I already knew (gotta love doctors). I didn't tear the rotator cuff, and the key thing to recovery is getting back to lifting to strengthen the support muscles again and prevent scarring. Unfortunately they also told me I'm supposed to sit on my butt all week and heal. Hopefully I can rehab my shoulder quickly so I can head back to the Gorge in a couple of weeks. At least there's basketball on TV so I have something to watch, the downside is that I haven't gotten much work done. Oh well, I just gotta make it a few more weeks and then I'm packing up the truck and heading to California.
Life just gets better and better, I may not quite have enough time to be at the bars tonight (Although I am having the first beer I've had in a week as I write this, it's a Black Flag Porter if you care), but I think I'll get everything done by Monday. In addition I learned that Martha Stewart was found guilty today, and if that wasn't enough, John Ashcroft is in the hospital. I may not believe in karma, but this is just a little more circumstantial evidence in it's favor. Don't worry, there's no danger of me becoming a mystic of any fashion, without empirical evidence I'm not buying any theories. It is nice to see these people get what's coming to them though, I mean Ashcroft is pure evil, and I was kind of worried that Martha Stewart might get off because she's a public figure.
On the other hand, while I am most definitely voting for not-Bush, Kerry is a pretty piss poor Democratic candidate. I'm definitely against radicals, but Kerry is too wishy washy on most issues even for my taste. On the other hand, if he can fix the economy and protect American jobs, I don't much care what else he does. That being said, I'm not sure which not-Bush I'm voting for. I realize that a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for Bush in one sense, but I'm not sure that I can in good conscience support Kerry. Unfortunately at this point the only fix I can see for my dilemma is for Bush to abolish elections and declare himself god-king, which is a less than desirable alternative. Aaanyway, I've survived 16 years of ridiculously bad presidents, I'm sure I can survive 4 more.
Well, I survived this week, barely, and I made every deadline (though by a matter of hours in some cases). And I broke my promise to myself not to start sleeping in the lab. But after 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, I feel like a real human being again.
Only 8 days until spring break, I'll be climbing in Red River Gorge from Friday the 12th until Wednesday the 17th, then back in Bloomington for a couple days, and in Louisville for the last weekend. And I got more good news, my job in Livermore, CA came through, I'll be at the DOE's Sandia Lab working with the Embedded Reasoning Institute on the Mobile Architecture for Sensor Systems (MASS) project.
So I just realized that the guy I was climbing with last week was "Looks like Dave". If you get the reference you'll understand why I was excited, unfortunately I didn't realize who he was at the time. Chris says that he's an amazing guitarrist, and he plays a lot like Trey.
On a completely unrelated note, it looks like my internship at Sandia National Laboratory may be back on. If you have plans to be in or around Livermore, CA (it's outside San Francisco) this summer let me know. I don't really know anyone out there, so friendly faces would be nice. I'll probably also be looking for traveling partners since I'm told Sandia works on a 9/80 schedule which means 3 day weekends every other week. I'd like to hit a lot of west coast destinations, but the only thing I'm sure of as of yet is that climbing in Yosemite is definitely on the list, other suggestions are always welcome. Since I'm too lazy to drive out there and I don't want to put the miles on my new-to-me car I won't have a car, so friends with cars would be especially nice to have.
So to celebrate my birthday on Saturday I decided to prove to myself that I can still drop into deep hack on occasion by working from 2PM until 8:30AM the next morning. Not that I didn't have any fun for my birthday, the whole reason I didn't start working until 2PM was because I was out drinking and playing pool until 2:30AM with Sid and Stephen. I got a lot of stuff done and feel that it may yet be possible to survive my workload this month. On the other hand my sense of time is a bit scrambled now, I think my body is meant to work on a 36-hour day. As soon as I get these pesky classes out of the way and all I have to worry about is research I think I'll switch to a 24-hours-on/12-hours-off schedule. Hopefully academia will tolerate my strange scheduling whims better than the real world.
First Post!
Sorry...old habits die hard. Anyway...
Here's the backstory since I've been incognito as far as the net is concerned for some time. I'm currently a Ph.D. student at Indiana University where I'm in the Computer Science Dept.. I'm in Bloomington, IN most of the time but I make the occasional trip back to my hometown Louisville, KY. I graduated from Vanderbilt University in May of 2003 with a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics. Finding the 'real' world rather distasteful, I decided to hide out in academia as long as I can. But why southern Indiana? Well, my family has a place on Patoka Lake about 50 miles south of Bloomington and I kind of like the area. I never realized how much I would miss the big city conveniences though, especially the whole stuff to do thing, like music and cultural opportunities. Anyway, I do a lot of weight lifting and rock climbing now as those are the main recreational activities available around here, and I chill out on the lake in the summer.
So why did I put up a website to tell you that? Well, it was brought to my attention that the only google result in the top 5 for 'Nick Edmonds' that actually referred to me pointed here. And that picture is just plain embarrasing. Thus, this page...
Disclaimer:
So I finally got off my ass and created a website. If it looks familiar to yours or someone elses, it's probably because I stole your layout, what can I say, I'm a lazy bastard. Email me and tell me what a jerk I am if you're so inclined...