Back from Ithaca

I gave my talk on Tuesday, and I have to say, it went very well. Both on Monday and Tuesday I met with various friends from my graduate school years--including Kathryn Caggiano who was a year ahead of me at Cornell and now is back lecturing and organizing the Masters of Engineering program.

I also met three of the faculty members that joined after I left, Mark Lewis, Phillip Protter, and Shane Henderson. Another faculty member that joined last year, Dawn Woodard I already knew since I was on her graduate committee at Duke and we've coauthored several papers together.

Altogether it was a great experience, and I'm glad that I got the chance to head back there!

Prep day

Tomorrow I'm flying out of RDU up to Ithaca, NY in order to give a talk at Cornell in my old graduate department: Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. So this is one of those prep days, my last chance to get my ducks in a row, my cards lined up, my &lsaquo object &rsaquo put in &lsaquo position object normally travels in &rsaquo .

To that end, I make "To Do" lists for the day. I try to keep them short and only consisting of the things that I absolutely must get accomplished today. I have other "To Do" lists that are general in the sense that they need to be done, but maybe not today. I'll write the "To Do" list down on paper I find around the house, and throw it away after the last one is crossed off.

My "To Do" list today is incredibly boring:

1. Get Haircut
   
2. Pack for trip
   
3. Finish writing slides (10 to go!)
   

I am trying to get this done by 6:00 so that I can join the Statistics Departmental Party tonight. It was supposed to be two weeks earlier, but a hurricane threatened to come through and it was moved.