Looks like my last substantive post (he generously declared) was written back in early April and the last of any kind in late May. In the meantime, the sorta personal stuff has gone on Facebook and the baseball-related internet writing on Viva el Birdos.

It was a good summer: the weather was mild and pleasant and is now thoroughly missed. The cool summer terrified me after the frigid winter we’d just been through. So far, Autumn has been mild, too, although wet to a historic extreme.

I stopped taking classes this semester: I’m not currently a student, as I have more than enough credits. I’ll need to register for 0 hours next semester to deposit and defend my dissertation, which is coming along pretty well now, although obviously not as quickly as anyone involved would prefer. My goal is to get the whole thing largely written before the New Year: a tall order, as I’m not quite half-way through, but the part I’m working through now is by far the most difficult. If I have it close to completion by the end of the year, I’ll be very confident that the defense happens in the Spring semester. The work is very engaging and I’m fortunate my advisor hasn’t abandoned me after all the time it has taken to get here.

I’ve been working for the same group, although as staff now instead of a student worker. My workload has been shifting away from production work a bit and more into software development and infrastructure (although I’m out in the field at least two or three times a week.) I wrote a daemon to wrap ffmpeg today in about an hour and a half that will dramatically improve our throughput speeds and, provided the right hardware, would allow us to perform campus-wide transcoding services, if requested, and it already has been for at least one large media provider on campus. I’ll have the office all to myself Monday and Tuesday and have a bunch of projects that have sat on the shelf for too long ready to work on.

Over break, I’m looking forward to getting those projects knocked out and making some major progress on the research, as well as my second annual all-day Thanksgiving feast/football fest. Also happy for the Illinois Basketball season to truly get underway, as the football season was something of a let-down.

In short, things are good. Heading in the right direction. No complaints.