pass

So, I passed. I'm exhausted with three months of writing and a month of solid studying. It would've been easier if I had just laid down and let them kick me.

The night before the day

So yeah. I've spent the last month holed up in an office overlooking what may be the ugliest building on the University of Minnesota campus (yes, that would be the civil engineering building). I get in around 9 am and have been staying until 8:30 at night. It would be lying if I said I spent ALL that time working, but I feel like I've done everything to prepare for tomorrow.

Tomorrow. My "prelimenary" oral exam. If I pass, I become a Ph.D. candidate. If I fail I could retake the exam in a few months, but most likely I'll just get my MS and a job. I'm way past the part where I care if pass or fail, just knowing that I've done everything I can up to this point.

No matter what happens, I'll be spending Tuesday with Adrian. I'm starting to think he doesn't know who I am anymore.

I'll try and update sometime soon as to the result.

Oh yeah... Summer is here and there are some serious stereo projects in development. Up next is rewiring my pass pearl, followed shortly by the assembly of an aleph mini.

Also in the works: new speakers (Adam, I promise I'll get in touch next week), and a headphone system for the office. I'm looking forward to good sounds in 08.

Written prelim

I've gotten the grades from two of my committee members. Both passed me. I made some pretty egregious mistakes, mostly due to my poor communication skills (at least that's what my wife tells me).

When describing Matthiessen's rule, I said that the deviatory components came from the resistivity due to interaction of the dislocations and the phonons, and that for low dislocation densities, and moderate temperatures that electrons and phonons don't interact. I'm sure that 99% of people reading this (including anyone in my family) has no idea what I just said, but I'll let you know that the last five words are patently false. I felt like a moron, but I really meant to say that the electron-phonon and electron-dislocation components do not interact. It's not a fine distinction, its the difference between a good assumption in most cases and being wrong. Anyhow, I still passed and thats something.

Strangely, my last post was titled "this process is hell", very similar to "the thousand thicknesses of hell" used to describe the Exum ridge route by Glenn Exum. I didn't find this out until after, but as I'm planning to make this climb in August looks like I've scheduled two trips to hell in one calendar year.

I leave you with this:

"this process is hell"

I turned in my written preliminary exam for my Ph. D. candidacy on Tuesday. My oral exam is postponed due to things beyond my control, but it looks like its only going to be pushed back 10 days.

That gives me 10 more days to recover from the 85 page written. This process is hell.