Ben’s Blog

For the past six years I’ve been working for a small defense contractor here in Oxford, writing software for airborne radar. I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot along the way. Unfortunately, we were primarily funded by Congressional earmarks, which have fallen out of favor as of late. To make a long story short, I was laid off four weeks ago. I harbor no ill will, because I feel like they held on as long as they could, but it still sucked, a lot.

There aren’t many high-paying software jobs here in Oxford. We briefly considered moving elsewhere, but ultimately decided to stay in Oxford, at least for now. Most of you will recall that Cassie does not work outside the home, so it was a little scary until I got an actual job offer.

Luckily, there was a timely opening at the University, and I’ll start today as a High Performance Computing Specialist for the Mississippi Center for Supercomputing Research (MCSR). We have two SGI Altix supercomputers and a large Linux cluster. I’ll be working with researchers from all of Mississippi’s public universities to help them utilize the supercomputers, provide training, etc. I’m looking forward to it, and it’ll be nice to be back on campus where I have several friends from previous stints as a student and as a Network Administrator for the Computer Science department (my first “real” job).

There’s also a research component to my new job, which I’m hoping will accelerate my PhD research. I haven’t been very productive in that area lately.

Hopefully I’ll find a little more time to blog and tweet as well, but no promises.

Last week I took the comprehensive exams (“comps”) for my PhD in Computer Science. There were four of them: Theory, Programming Languages, Software Engineering, and Systems. I won’t know for certain how I did for a few weeks or so, but I feel good about all of them. I’d be shocked if I failed any of them.

For the past month or so I’ve been spending every spare moment studying for comps. I started studying a long time before that, but really didn’t get started in earnest until about a month ago. Cassie and the kids gave me a few weekends to myself so I could get a lot of studying done.

I was most concerned about the Theory and Programming Languages tests (the latter due to the Automata section), so I spent most of my time studying for those. Of course, I ended up feeling really good about those, but trying to cram the night before for Software Engineering and Systems. While I managed to stress myself out over the last two, and missed a fair amount of sleep from the cramming, I ended up doing fine on them too.

Studying for comps was an interesting exercise on its own. I learned and relearned a lot. I also convinced myself that I’m definitely in the right field. I found virtually everything I read to be fascinating.

It’s quite liberating to have comps over with. They’ve been looming for a few months now. Now I can spend time on other things…like my really tough Machine Learning course. I hope to find a little time for some ham stuff and some backpacking soon too.

I’ll finish the coursework for my PhD in the spring. I also hope to propose a topic for my dissertation in the spring. If I can stay motivated, with a little luck, I’ll defend my dissertation in spring of 2012. It’s certainly an optimistic schedule, but that’s what I’m shooting for.

I got my Master’s degree in Computer Science in May of 2007. Luke was born about three weeks after graduation. Liam was born fourteen and a half months after that. Liam is nearly a year old now, and it’s time to go back to school and get my PhD.

I had planned on taking it easy the first semester and just taking one class. However, I was asked to teach a class, which comes with a partial tuition waiver, so I’m going to take advantage of that. I’ll be taking Dr. Rice’s Computer Audio course, ENGR596, as well as an independent study course. I’m not sure what the independent study course will be just yet, but hopefully it’ll help me decide on a topic for my dissertation.

The class I’m teaching is CSci103, which I have always described as the “this is a mouse” course. In the past I’ve always taught courses for sophomore or higher Computer Science majors with a few MIS majors thrown in (CSci223 twice and CSci323 once). They tend to take the class somewhat seriously. This time I’ll be teaching mostly freshmen, most with “non-demanding” majors. It will certainly be different.

In addition to teaching a class and taking two classes, I’ll be studying for comprehensive exams (to be taken in a year or so) as well as researching and trying to get published so I can get hired as a professor when I’m finished. It’s fair to say my hobbies and my family will be neglected to some degree.

When will I be finished? I’m going to say four years, which will have me graduating in the Spring of 2013. I could finish a little sooner (or a lot later), but I think that’s a realistic timeframe if I keep on task.