Peace Corps invites you to serve!!

ON SATURDAY I nearly exploded with excitement because when I came home I discovered that there was a big, blue folder waiting for me with my offical Peace Corps invitation inside!

Wyatt and I will be serving in the Philippines! My title is "English Language Fluency Trainer" and hers is "Youth Development Facilitator". We don't know exactly where in the Philippines we will actually be going (and won't know until after we get there), but we're so excited!

I've contacted some currently serving Volunteers, touched bases with people I know here in the States with family or history in the Philippines, and I'm also trying to get in touch with some Returned PCV's to find out what pitfalls to avoid etc.

We're SOO excited!!

Lonely. Hopeful. Content.

The three words in my post's title are rather strange, yes? They don't generally go together but they sum up my situation nicely.

Well, I'm lonely because Wyatt is out in Indiana visiting her family. Her dad paid for a ticket for her but suggested I not go because staying in his parents house might've been too stressful for them. Well, they ended up staying in a hotel anyway, but whatever. I'll get over it. Unlimited texts and lots of stuff going on makes it bearable.

Hopeful - news from the Peace Corps is in the mail, apparently. Received notice on my Peace Corps portal today that the packet is IN TRANSIT which will describe our assignment!! I hope it gets here TOMORROW, but I doubt it. Damn, why does it take a week for a package to get across the US? Don't they have teleportation nowadays? jeez.

I'm also very hopeful because I JUST read that Oracle is releasing the rights to Openoffice.org back to the community - presumably, to The Document Foundation (TDF). That's very cool, I think, because hopefully the IP will help bolster OO's devleopment even further. I really like TDF's website and that they really, actually want community people to contribute to cleaning up the code - they even have it layered so that people with relatively little skill can still help, by doing something as simple as reading through comments and removing irrelevant or ancient stuff. Very nice.

Content because I look forward to a great life with my Wyatt. Paul (her grandfather, whom we are living with and caretaking for) and I were talking today and he mentioned that his sister-in-law, Jo, married her husband and their first living place together was a trailer. Not a mobile home, but a trailer - like a 5th wheel behind a pickup. Yeah.

Now, I know this is probably weird that that really appeals to me, but the point of this little aside is: I pictured Wyatt and I making ends meet RVing around somewhere in a little trailer and it just filled me with joy. Haha, what an awesome idea. Well anyway even if that's not in our future the essence of the idea is still correct: we're in it together, and we're gonna have some badass stories to tell.

OK

~Micah

Quality > Quantity?

Well, I guess I won't receive any kind of accolade for the frequency of my posts. I've been bad.

Well here's an update to what I've been working on!

The Peace Corps. That's where I plan on being for the next 27ish months. Wyatt and I have been working very hard on our Peace Corps applications for nearly a year now. We're probably going to serve in a Health Extension role in Africa, although all of that is subject to change. The second-to-last leg in the process, the Medical Certification, should be done for us now - I just faxed in the latest (and hopefully last) packet to the Health office this morning.

In other news, Wyatt and I are also now officially doing community presentations called HIV 101 in nearby the Common Ground HIV/AIDS community center where we volunteer. We did our first presentations yesterday and it was amazing! We had the entire class engaged and asking questions, and I feel that we distributed some really important information about HIV/STI infection prevention.

Our work with the Red Cross continues at a frenetic pace. Over the weekend we attended a Psychological First Aid training course that was very helpful. It's really interesting how the awareness of psychological trauma is really starting to catch on, but hasn't really caught up with our awareness of physical trauma. To compare and contrast, I'm working on preparing for getting a First Aid/CPR Instructor certification at the Red Cross so I've been shadowing in those courses. The classes I've been to have been filled to capacity with students, and the material is very prescriptive and definitive, while the instructors are energetic and engaging. The Psychological First Aid (PSA) course was very different - we didn't even have enough students to officially have the class, with only 5 (the minimum being 6), but we went through it anyway. The material was adequate, but the role of PSA was a little unclear for us. Little things like processes and procedures were mostly nonexistent, and we were asked generally just to care and listen. Obviously these are pretty much the most important things to do and I expect that with some experience a disaster volunteer can learn the DO's and DON'Ts pretty easily. Even so, I would've liked to see a more comprehensive approach to the material.

And finally, in the Lab. I'm contemplating the title change I've been offered from Lab Assistant to Programmer/Analyst. I think it would be a good choice but it emphasizes the technological part of my job much more than the medical-research-lab portion, which is just as important, in my opinion. It's important to let people know that I'm familiar with how to deal with a clean environment and that I'm experienced with bio-hazardous material management techniques. I'll probably pursue the title change and list both titles on a resume, but that's a little dicey.

The role and usefulness of this blog really needs to change. I don't think about it a lot but I want to be chronicling the things in my life for later reflection. This is, after all, a very important part of my life and I have ready, convenient access to the internet at all times. I might as well be logging my thoughts and behaviors. SO MUCH has changed in my world since my last post. It's a shame that I haven't been recording it at all. An example is all the hiking, working out, and sports I've been doing. I've never been so physically active or in shape in my life and it feels amazing! Especially the hiking. I've always loved the outdoors and learning that there is so much great hiking within easy driving distance of LA was really an eye-opener for me.

So I think I'm going to make a concerted effort to post every week in this blog. Even if nothing is happening I'm sure I can find it in myself to do some ranting. Besides, I need to get into a cadence so I'm sure to provide updates to my friends and family if/when I haul off to another country for over two years. Fun fun fun!

ccll

~Micah

Decisions, decisions...

I've always been passionate about technology. Before school, it was re-wiring my alarm clock radio with huge speakers and an in-line power source. In elementary it was messing with my Atari 2600 console and, later, my Mac SE all-in-one and dot-matrix printer. I even tried to get my computer lab teacher to wire up the macs in the lab for a rudimentary chat room. By middle school I was digging around with Windows .dlls to get emulators to work, and in high school hacking around menu.lst and xorg.conf files to breathe new life into my dad's ancient Thinkpad he gave to me.

I've also really enjoyed evangelising for open-source products. All of my friends have put up with me rail on and on about GNU/Linux, and the entire idea of the open-source development model. I've enjoyed helping those who were receptive to it learn how stable, reliable, and interoperable these systems are. I've doubly enjoyed in-depth discussions of the business merits of an open-source development model vs the closed-source, "guarded castle" proprietary system.

So now I'm a senior in college and I don't really know what to pursue first...my desire to learn the nitty-gritty aspect of the computer world, by going into a technical field where I'll do a lot of learning (and somewhat less earning), or to start in business and sales, where the moolah is good but the foo-bar won't be as prevalent. In that case I'll have to learn technology on an ancillary note.

I figure that if I go into the technical side, I'll be learning something important - a way of thinking. At this point I don't care so much if I learn PHP or C++, IP4 or IP6, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard - I will instead be learning mostly about the mindset involved in the technology development/maintenence field, just as I've learned how the corporate-retail-sales and genetics research mindsets work. And of course, my technical skills like in programming and configuration will grow dramatically, since I'm only passingly versed in such matters.

Going into business/sales/management, however, I feel like my core competencies will be better leveraged. I'm willing to put myself out there and get to know different people's perspectives; I've always enjoyed helping people solve problems, especially when I make money providing a solution. I also feel better suited to the environment, having worked in a managed sales position for a number of years already. Plus, I won't be behind the crowd in that field; I won't be playing catch-up quite as frantically, and I'll be able to spend the extra time I have learning programming at a lower pace. Unfortunately this kind of work is much more taxing and will add to the immense stress at home of having my lovely lady working frenetically to get into, and then perform in, Law school.

Decisions, decisions. And this one is not so trivial as Sprint or Verizon. I feel like I'll be pretty committed for at least a year or two once I pick a path.



And this post brought me no closer to an answer! Off to the pro/con list...

~Micah

Business

Being an entrepreneur is difficult. Any student who has attempted to start a business they believe will turn into an extra source of income can appreciate this. It's surprising sometimes how difficult customers can be, even in the incredibly-informal and dirt-cheap area of college student work.

It's a constant back-and-forth between whether it's worth the time investment it takes from one's studies; we juggle the value of being a proprietor on a resume, the value of a high GPA, the value of the additional income, the potential that exists for a full-time job being one's own boss right out of college...the list goes on and on.

But we all have a drive that is difficult to define. We want. We push. It's nearly impossible to go a full day without thinking about another way to push the limits of our business.

It only takes one measly little sale, whether there be a $5 economic profit or a $1000 economic profit. For new businesspeople, it's a confirmation of the ability you believe you have when a customer is happy to have your help with something. The positive reinforcement from experiences like that is elating.

And yet...it comes back to a struggle when we spend too much time on one project and don't have an adequate payout, or when our invested time in the venture interferes with other very important aspects of our lives...our free time, our relationships, our schoolwork...our futures.

I continue to discover that it is at once the most wonderful and terrible of things, this entrepreneurial spirit in me.

Oh, BTW I just posted a coupon for my business. Enjoy!

~Micah

Student Office Software

I'm a fan of open-source software. What really hooked me is the catchphrase "Free as in Freedom." Any college-age kid knows that software and music and video can be obtained for free - it is the decision of the individual whether they are willing to use it without paying for a product that has a price tag. Some call that stealing.

Sure, open-source software is free in the same sense that such "stolen" software is - it doesn't cost any money to install and run. For me that was an initial attraction. But Open Source programs do more than that. The DNA of the program is released in the public domain so that any person with the knowledge and skill can view, patch, correct, or use the DNA of a given program. The idea is that programs are information...and information, like speech, should contribute to the well-being of the world at large. I was so taken with this idea that I turned to open-source computing on a large scale - I no longer run Windows or the Mac OS, but instead run a GNU/Linux operating system called Ubuntu, and use open-source programs with it.

One such program is Openoffice.org, the drop-in replacement for the MS Office suites. Openoffice is built in standards that allow it to communicate in a much larger array of ways than Office can - it can open and save dozens of file formats, up to and including Microsoft's latest .docx format.

Some Openoffice (OO) users complain that some functions aren't as intuitive as Office's. I beg to differ in most cases of that point - it simply seems less intuitive because those users are used to Office's, but in fact with some thinking OO's treatment of certain functions makes even more sense.

And there's one thing that Office can't do out of the box, that OO can...save as a PDF. Have you ever had a paper due with REALLY specific formatting requirements, e-mailed your document to yourself to open it on a school or a friend's computer, and suddenly...your formatting has changed somehow? Nothing about the document has changed - usually situations like this are due to differences in the programs reading them, as Microsoft keeps changing the way their programs render the documents saved as .doc. Using a PDF, however...eliminates such problems, because PDFs are more like pictures...so they can't be messed up on a different computer. PDF's are also a much more professional way to submit things like resumes, CVs, letters of recommendation, and other official correspondence. Openoffice.org's free, free-as-in-freedom office suite allows you to do just that...painlessly. As in, click File>Save as PDF. It's that simple.

But the PDF functionality is available in Office for a fee or with an add-on. Sure, that's true - but my problem with Office goes well beyond it's unprofessional finish. Office's most recent iteration - 2007 - with the new .docx formats - is very poorly compatible with the older versions. Additional packs have to be installed just to render/view .docx documents, and the formatting is frequently lost on such documents. With Openoffice there's never been a massive shift in formatting. Openoffice sticks with the Open Document Format as it's default saving schematic, which allows consistency across versions of OO.

I really strongly encourage anybody reading this to take a look at Openoffice.org. It's an amazing resource and it's all I use to do personal, scholastic, and work editing.

Research Methods for Psychology Students

100B is to weed out the weak.

It's to separate the wheat and the chaff, divide the "them" and the "us". You hear rumors that it's used as a basic yardstick to determine if a student will be "good" at research in post-bacclaureate settings, Apparently.

Let's break down UCLA's Research Methods program real quick here. It's a huge lecture hall with 200 to 300 students, broken up into "Lab" sections of 15 to 25 students each. Each Lab section is taught by a different TA who has a great deal of control over individual grades in his/her Lab. The Lab grade constitutes a majority of the class grade.

Unfortunately the TA's don't even know what the grading rubrics will look like for each assignment until after the due dates. This creates HUGE PROBLEMS! Including points off for things that WERE NOT DISCUSSED IN LAB, nor were suggested at any point in the textbook, workbook, APA manual, or by any explicit convention.

TA's are given the ability to pick and choose which APA standards to follow, thus COMPLETELY INVALIDATING the entire point of the course: TO LEARN COMMONLY ACCEPTED METHODS of RESEARCH. They ought to retitle the course "Arbitrary, Variable Research Methods" - 100BAV...

A student's grade is curved against their Lab, but they aren't allowed to discuss grades with labmates. Fortunately, some professors release class-wide grades so you know where you stand in the sea of other students. UNFORTUNATLEY THIS DOESN'T HELP since each TA uses DIFFERENT GRADING METHODS. Students are left without any idea of where they stand except by listening in to whispers between friends about midterm scores. This is very frustrating.

And grades aren't all that's disallowed to discuss. The powers-that-be in Psych are so concerned about cheating that a student isn't allowed to discuss their research paper WITH THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THEIR GROUP WHO ARE WRITING THE SAME RESEARCH PAPER. It's my understanding that the scientific community is in fact a COMMUNITY, and the entire point of the vetting process is to get OTHER MEMBERS of that community to PROVIDE FEEDBACK on your work. So not only are we NOT learning the APA method, but we're NOT learning how to organize and solicit peer reviews.

The Lab section of Research Methods is NOT teaching its students anything important. All it does is offer a chance to students to feel humiliated, alienated, and alone in a sea of other students. It's about the best way to ensure that students LOSE their idealism towards research.

Burning the chaff is a great way to ensure that your crops don't grow as well next season.

~Micah