Hitn the Road

Well I didn't complete all my goals set out for the week, but I now have a rough copy of my entire thesis complete (minus the conclusion and future work). I sent a copy to my adviser to look at and hopefully we can meet next week to discuss revisions.

I am getting ready for my trip down south. I feel very relaxed as I basically spent the entire day preparing. I made myself two audio books to listen to on the way down. My friend whom I will be staying with called me but I missed his call. I think that he's in class so hopefully I can touch base with him before I hit the road.

I have a scheduled viewing of the property at 12 tomorrow; depending how well and how soon that goes I might stay another day or head out to tampa to visit another friend. There a chance of thunderstorms tomorrow so you never know.

One more thing...this is just ridiculous lol!

No 2 pages today

I had a feeling I wouldnt be able to meet my quota today. I needed an entire day just to find and test a dataset that I would feel comfortable putting into my thesis. I believe I have accomplished that today.

Also I was told that there was a new thesis style document for dissertation that I would need to format my document for. So I basically did that and now my references are showing up how they are supposed to!

So I will consider these two thing sufficient progress. Tomorrow I will put the datastep into my document.

Creativity

Part of research I have learned is being able to create a plausible storyline to the application of your research. I was quite pleased with my storyline justifying my model specification I came up with today; I satisfies both my intuition and the math. So far I am on pace, and even exceeded a little bit with this added tidbit, with the outline I set yesterday. I suspect finding an reasonable time series to apply my work on may take more work than the one day I have assigned it, but I will try regardless. But I am done for today and will hit the gym in a few.

I spoke with the suntrust mortgage guy again today and I should be approved for up to an $100000 loan tomorrow. This is probably much more than I need but it's always good to have some wiggle room. I have narrowed down my search to less than 8 homes (townhouses) all of which are less than 100k even though they were built a few years ago. Some of these properties were going for 400k just a few years ago as well; it is utterly amazing how this mortgage phenomenon went on for so long.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that house values will increase significantly when you have a large number of buyer bidding on a house. One problem that arose was that many of the bidders were given loans they should have never gotten. But the banks didn't care because they sold these loans to other investors as AAA because as long as houses kept going up, even if a bidder defaulted, the value of the house would recoup any possible losses. It almost seems like a big pyramid scheme because the moment the market ran out of bidders, than the housing prices would drop substantially and banks and investors would longer be able to recoup losses.

Of course this is all in hindsight but this will be a case-study in finance classes for decades if not centuries to come.

Very calm day...

I woke up this morning very hungry and thirsty and late. I still took the time to make eggs and waffles and I tried a new combination of spearmint and Jasmine tea. This created an excellent combination and I have been feeling extremely relaxed and calm.

I finished my 2-page quota today very quickly as well. I really should come to a close sometime next week, here's what I have mapped in my mind for the remaining things that need to get done:

1. Illustration of Latest Result (Monday)
2. Illustration using actual Data (Tuesday)
3. Conclusions (Wednesday)
4. Future Work (Thursday)

I plan to leave Tallahassee Thursday night and spend one night in St. Augustine visiting a friend. From there I will either do a 1 or 2 day trip in the Riviera Beach area to look at housing. I don't plan on getting much work done during this trip, but any of the 4 things I don't get done during the week I will hopefully get done then.

I want to leave sufficient time for revision and the planning another journal article.

All my committee member are ok with my July 17 defense date except one who has said that he will be out of town and another whom I haven't heard from yet. If the one I haven't heard from is ok with the date, then I will see if my finance adviser is willing to do the defense by conference call. I really like the July 17 date, so hopefully we can work something out.

3-pages today

I managed to added an additional page over my quota today making me feel even better about my progress. I have mapped out in my head the remaining components that need to be added to chapter 7. There will no doubt need to be substantial editing done to my document but I would at least like to get the framework solidified by the end of this month. That still looks possible and I might even get done a week earlier than expected.

I plan on taking trip down to S. Florida next week to look at a few houses. I have narrowed my focus to riviera beach...even to a small subdivision where there are newly built house that are substantially below their going prices just a few years ago. I need to get pre-approved for a loan as well and somehow make since of all the mortgage jargon along with my thesis.

I went to the comedy zone last night because a friend has won free tickets and it was by far the least funniest time I have experienced there. Honestly, I wasn't surprised it was so bad as I went to the website and the acts did not seem like they would be funny to me but being that it was a free show I hoped I would be surprised. I was not and I sat through and hour and change of attempted humor. The funniest guy was the 1st act who is the host, that is really shameful.

Havent been to the gym in a couple of days and so that is a spot high on my priority list right now.

Volatile Day

I realized I must have threw away some important material while I was cleaning up my room a few weeks ago; that material is not easily replaceable so was my first big disappointed of the day.

The second disappointment came when I got to my office an realized that the computer in which I had been running a simulation for three days on had been shut off and I lost all that information.

Once I got over this I began my day and this is actually the first day in a few days that I have been able to resume my 2 page a day mantra. Yesterday I spend on revision that my adviser gave me. He will be leaving town shortly and so that was our last face-2-face meeting; from here on out everything will be on skype.

I only got a response back from two professors regarding my defense date, this might be because of the email system going down during that time so I will send the email out again. I am also dealing with alot of mortgage people right now so there's alot on the plate.

One of my friends called me an hour ago. Apparently he was pulled over in virginia and didn't have all his information because he just bought a new car. Since his middle name was "Muhammad" the policeman starts harassing him about being a terrorist and asking him if he has a bomb in the car. The policeman than rips out his dashboard looking for drugs and/or bomb. Then he get's a ticket for reckless driving! I think he needs a lawyer because these cops are quite ridiculous in the entire Georgia-Virgina region. This is not the first story of ridiculousness I've heard; but one thing I do know is that you are helpless if you try to fight this stuff yourself.

In spite of all the craziness of today; I feels as if I am making decent progress.

Setting a date....

I have now begun the deliberations of finding a suitable thesis defense date for all members of my committee. Already I am having problems with my ideal date: July 17. This date is ideal because my stats adviser will be back from his summer trip and it is still before I leave for my job. However I have just been informed that my finance adviser will be out of town during that time.

This was one of the things that I was banking on to just work, but I knew it was a low probability of magically getting 6 schedules to work. My other option is getting my start date extended once more...I really don't want to do that even though they said it wouldn't be an issue.

Even more time...

After talking with my adviser I realized that I have even more time to complete my work. The last day to turn in all my work for Fall graduation without paying fall graduation fees is August 24. The deadline is July 13 for Summer graduation. So basically, I could get everything done this summer with less of a time crunch and just walk in December. That is perfectly fine with me, as long as I get what I need done by July 20 something.

I am now running my simulations on a desktop computer which is must faster than my laptop. I went out to BW3's with a couple of my friends from back in P-Town yesterday to watch the Lakers game. I had a good time and it definitely took my mind off of alot of things. I will probably go out again tonight and I am anticipating the new Star Trek movie that is coming out; it looks pretty cool.

Right now, I am still trying to compute the extra time I could have. I could theoretically just work on chapter 6 this whole month and on chapter 7 the next month. I am definitely not feeling as rushed now even though I am still sticking to my 2 pages a day.

And the winner is...

So I went to my office this morning and a professor walked up to me and said: "Congratulations!". I didn't know what he was congratulating for; I assumed it was the job but I accepted that weeks ago. But apparently I won the: Yongyuan and Anna Li Student Presentation Award. This is basically an award for the best Essay presentation among graduate students in the department for the academic year.

I must say I it was quite unexpected and I felt quite honored to received the award; My name will now be plastered on the wall of the Wilcoxen room for all future graduate students to see. My name is also on the wall at UWF for all eternity for best undergraduate student; I guess I am trying very hard to leave my mark haha.

I've been working diligently on chapter 6 of my thesis, I think I figured out today how the chapter is going to flow in it's final form. This will be the last chapter before I add my final work in chapter 7. I hope to have chapter 6 completed by the end of the week; and be well into chapter 7 by next weeks end. I want a week to spare in May so that I can do extensive revisions.

Setbacks...and Setforwards

I had some good news and bad new about my laptop yesterday. The good news is that it's not my internal adapters that is losing connectivity which is a very expensive problem. It is my power cord that has a hole in it which is a less expensive problem. The bad news is that it is so badly damaged that I am afraid to move my computer for fear that the cord will no longer work and I will have to postpone my work until the new one I ordered comes in. I figured out if I bend it in a certain way it continues to work so I will try to keep it in this position for as long as possible.

I have submitted final grades and I am officially done with teaching! I struggled to get my 2 pages completed yesterday; I ran into many issues with the code which I quite honestly don't have time to look at right now. I am still getting results and I wont be able to answer every question that arises. My dissertation is now at the 80 page mark (including appendices and citations.); I should be able to add another 10-20 pages from what I've been thinking about in my head.

I was watching the discovery channel yesterday. How come indigenous nudity is okay to show on tv? I mean they literally show all the body parts of 12 and 13 year old girls on national tv; if the same girl were born here, you would get arrested for viewing this material. Society is interesting.