It’s been a while since my last post, so here are some updates since we got back from Mississippi:
- I went to Austin for a conference. My advisor did his Ph.D. and postdoc there at the University of Texas, and there is a whole group of people who are basically all students of these two professors — one at UMass and one at Texas. This group of people all do research in garbage collection and compilers, so they meet twice a year to get an idea of what everyone is working on, to collaborate, etc. Sam and I flew down for the 3-day meeting. It was a pretty awesome trip. I met some people that we are collaborating with, and I talked with other people working in the same area. It was really enjoyable, and I came back much more excited about my own research.
- I’ve started running again. I actually started when we were down in Mississippi, but since then I’ve worked my way back up to 30-minute runs 2x per week. This week will be my first week of running 3 times. I feel pretty good. I’m definitely out of shape, and my comfortable pace is way slower than what it used to be, but I’m happy to be running again, and the knee is holding up well so far. I’ve started back running with my grad school friends again, and I’ve also done several runs with Catherine. It’s nice getting back into my workout routine after a full month of gorging myself (Christmas + Austin trip).
- I’ve been playing a lot of Gears of War on Xbox 360. This was the big holiday game for the 360, and I really liked it. It’s a shooter, but it focuses on finding cover and being careful over running-and-gunning, like most shooters. Basically, your goal is to run from cover to cover and take out enemies. If you are exposed for more than a few seconds, you’ll get mowed down. It took me a while to adjust to this play style — I couldn’t even get through the tutorial on medium difficulty — but I’ve since adjusted and am playing through the game again on a harder difficulty. Great game.
