stevengharms.com

I started the pursuit of graduate education about a year ago.

Through the intervening 9 months I’ve learned a lot about myself, about what interests me, about what things have animated my intellectual development my entire life long, about the unique and coherent thread winding through my educational history, and yes, my friends, even a little bit about human nature.

I spent most of last Spring and the summer preparing for the GRE. In the fall I wrote the LatinVerb library and re-drafted a paper “Against the Anthropic Principle” in an effort to impress those with sway over my admissions process.

Ancillary thereto, I became involved with the Austin Ruby and Rails communities. I met the across-from-me-sitting Mr. Clinkscales, got a Twitter account, became active on Facebook and spent many hours at Sodade.

As winter closed in, I went through scores of drafts with my lovely editor trying to assemble a compelling presentation of my educational history and future plans all within a terse, LaTeX-formatted, 2-page bundle.

I asked people I respect to take time out of their busy days to put ink to paper describing me and commending me for graduate work.

But, like a wedding, it all came down to one moment, when you lock in the fruits of months, or years, of effort.

This was it:

I admit, I’m a bit cagey about admitting and showing this because, there’s the “what if:” “What if you don’t get accepted?” This is a very real possibility, though all my kindly-minded friends try to encourage me with “you’re smart” or “that’s just so you.” Well, let’s be honest, the school in question has quite a reputation, and while I may be devoted to learning, “wanting it bad enough” doesn’t have a field on the application, I’m sorry to say.

But I want those who read this to know my results: come Hell or high water. I also want to officially absolve you from saying “that’s too bad,” or “you can just try again,” etc. If I get rejected, I’ll take my lumps, I may appreciate offers of alcohol or Mexican food, but I’ll take my lumps. And do you know why?

Because I am proud of my application. It is absolutely, 100% me. It’s me through and through. If they don’t think that person is a fit, if the story I told of my intellectual development doesn’t jibe — well, then we were not meant for one another. It’s only by this act of radical honesty that I can truly feel comfortable facing the possibility that they may reject me. I advise this same approach to anyone seeking dates online as well.

Obviously, I hope they don’t reject me. I hope they can see my passion and my love for the material, I hope they can see that twisting path as adding up to someone chomping at the bit. I’ll confess I have fantasies about the fat envelope, I admit I dream of walking among the Rodin sculptures. I allow that “Pizza My Heart” and that special expanse of the Bay Area call to me…

But if I live in the maybe-yes / maybe-no zone I’ll go cuckoo as I await the verdict. At this point, though, it’s out of my hands.

So for those friends who’ve not seen me since before Thanksgiving or for those people I didn’t call back or email back, I am now coming out of my retreat and am trying to get me life back into order. First order of business, Thursday night dance at The Fed.

With Spring coming, I propose a picnic day out, where the various circles of my friends might mingle. Big park, blankets, picnic, mild Austin, Spring. I know some of you have new children whom I’d love to see in a sunny setting.

Any ideas?

Saturday I woke up early and headed to Sodade Coffee’s one-year anniversary. It was great to stop by and see all the regulars I usually see there come by in a different context: instead of the laptop and cell-phone activities I normally see it was the hackers with families on parade.

My congratulations go out to Kim and Genaro at this marker. Their seats have borne my studying, typing, researching self since this summer, so this place for retreat has been a welcome addition to North Austin.

During this visit, Kim gave me a sweet T-shirt and I had a chance to work on my statement of purpose outline. I don’t really want to write any more about the whole grad school application process because writing the applications is exhausting enough. A real treat were the amazing jalapeño kolaches prepared by Kim’s mom as a special treat on the occasion. Soft and doughy with a pepper bite, they were sublime.

I returned home around 2:30 and Lauren and I were going to try to see “Revolutionary Road.” It was sold out, so we headed down to the Westgate area and had a great dinner of Tiger Cry at Madam Mam’s. Thereafter we went to Tapestry dance studio and participated in a “dance party” for learning two-step.

Being far too cool for C&W in my younger years, I never got a hang of two-step. My opinions moved slightly when I matriculated and became exposed to “real” C&W: Dale Watson, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Kelly Willis and the rest of the Austin sound, but I never thought that a class would be something I did.

Well, my friends, let life surprise you.

It also turned out that The Derailers, who we had seen shortly after New Year’s at The Continental Club were playing at 9 at The Broken Spoke so, freshly imbued with two-step, waltz, and our swing background, we were ready to have a great old time on the hallowed boards.

It was a great night out: friendly folk, Walker red label and Shiner and great music from the guys: their sound has a beautiful reverb-y Roy Orbison kind of majesty with a great Texas swing to it (thinking a bit of Asleep at the Wheel here). I think they’re a great show and a great time.

Afterwards we head up congress to Magnolia South and closed out the night with eggs and queso.

It was a beautiful night, and a great night to remember the best reasons to live in Waterloo.

My good friends The League of Melbotis and his wife, Jamie, experienced the passing of their beloved Golden Retriever, and blog site namesake, Melbotis.

Mel and Dr. McBride

I remember following the link from Jim’s old blog site and finding The League and his adventures in Arizona almost 4 years ago. “Such an odd name for a dog,” was my, and many others’, initial thought. Roughly 2 years ago Ryan and Jamie moved to Austin and Lauren and I had the chance to make the acquaintance of that shaggy ball-hog.

To see Mel was to make an instant friend. There was something about his golden fur and ambling canter that just made you want to wring his furry middle. When you got his attention and he realized you were paying attention to him, his smile was instant, huge, and genuine. Over these last few years, no party chez League was complete without some ball throwing, or kicking if your hands were full, with Mel and his rambunctious younger housemate, Lucy. Lacking a canine friend ourselves, Lauren and I loved visiting Mel very much (it’s like being grandparents, all the benefits, none of the hassle ).

Yesterday we saw Mel off across the veil and into the Ganges, where ultimately we all must go. The only thing that matters in this world is using your time to show love to the world around you and maximizing the kindness therein. Mel was a golden buddha in this regard and a teacher to us all.

Until the mystery be known to me as well, good sir, farewell.

Friday I got an email from The League of Melbotis asking where I was and why he hadn’t heard from me in so long. I thought, surely this is some jest, I saw him just the other week…on…Halloween…40 days ago.

Forty days? It was hard to believe, but it is so, and my friends it’s because I’m in the home stretch on turning in my applications. I’m trying to wrangle up recommendations, get my writing sample done, do my second sample, and write a cohesive statement of purpose that makes the last 10 years seem like an integrated series of actions in an arc of intellectual development. Lauren commented that it’s almost like I’ve not had a weekend for the last 3 months. When it’s not work, it’s applications or sleep. I feel sorta like they should let you in strictly on the basis of having undertaken and juggled so much paperwork.

On the up side, much of the application is now done online, so it’s a bit of a surprise to me that the process is better than it could have been otherwise.

Since late October I’ve not really wanted to write anything here.

So I’ve not been writing things here. Less important things I tend to send to my Twitter account or handle via Facebook.

I’ve been preparing for the GRE since summer, July, actually. Tuesday I take the test. That may explain why writing here has been so sparse.

I’m a bit daunted, I’m doing the drills about where I need to, and yet I still worry. When the 4 hours is up I will see two numbers, thereafter I shall be elated ( whee! ) or, like the proverbial groundhog, shall have to return to my study den.

Here’s the truth: I’m sick and tired of the study den!

So, I spend, what I hope, will be this last Saturday looking at quantitative comparisons.

Anyway, here’s a great interview with the inimitable Paul Volcker:

“It seems to me what our nation needs is more civil engineers and electrical engineers and fewer financial engineers,” Volcker said.

Yes, it’s the day, the real day.

You can see pictures from the party we had for her over the weekend on Flickr.

I can’t wait to give presents! It’s my favorite part of birthdays!

Today WaMu bit the big one and the Republicans, those sacred guardians of fiscal conservatism, personal responsibility, and hard-work, are pushing for Congress to accept another balance of power mutating scheme that will make the few rich and undermine the checks and balances system.

But today, my friends, something momentous has happened in my life. I now owe a big fat $0.00 of credit card debt.

Having good credit has allowed me some really sweet 0% finances for moving, buying furniture, buying a car, selling that car, buying another car, re-financing my current car, buying office machinery needed, going to Rome, taking classes in Rome, going to Vancouver, trips to CA, presents, a TV, and a great fair bit of dining out. But it all came at a price, the sick feeling of moving monetized debt from place to place.

Make no doubt, I payed good attention to the lectures in Finance and have absorbed the lesson that someone else’s credit is better than my liquidity, that a dollar tomorrow is better than a dollar today ( when giving ), and that when you can get cheap capital ( and it isn’t much cheaper than 0% ) you should use the hell out of it. Knowing these lessons allowed me to use the capital well and not get in a screwy situation that a great many consumers are in now.

But the thing is, when you manage debt, it requires a certain amount of mental effort. You’re aware it’s out there. Companies and corporations hire people to make sure that the transactions are performed at the right time, that the narrowest of windows are used to maximize the profit made on other people’s money before they want it back. Monetized debt, the way that our world is run, is something that I just don’t want to carry around anymore.

Henceforth, only mortgages ( no plans looming there ) and car notes ( only one, and the payment’s reasonable, and I’m going to start attacking it now that I’m free of the shackles of Delaware ) are going to be in my portfolio, the rest is staying in currency and investment. It’s a tool, but never again will I finance my lifestyle by means of it.

I’m going to have to put “no” back in my vocabulary, until the Bank of Steven is a bit richer, but worry is an activity I no longer want in my life.

I’ve been taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging thanks to:

1. Car accident drama
2. Latin III
3. postponed GRE from this weekend to the 24^th of October
4. Work
5. The LatinVerb library.

Most of these don’t produce much in the way of visual artifacts, but here’s a short demonstration of the LatinVerb library ( it’s coherently working, but still needs some refactoring to get it to 0.1 release state… ). Here’s the video:

What’s going on here is that I have a Ruby debugger ( RDebug ) session open where I’ve created an instance of Latin::LatinVerb. I then proceed to execute some of the “vectors” that uniquely identify a single conjugation of a verb or a collection of verb tenses.

It’s not too pretty yet, my main work has been on getting the thinking working. The displaying part comes next.

Ants in the pantry = food all over the house and not in the pantry

“Great!”