Publish or perish

Warning: This post is part status update, part self promotion.

Yay! Remember all of those crazy conference articles I was working on in the middle of my dissertation writing? Three of them have been accepted to their respective conferences:

• “Work Practices of System Administrators: Implications for Tool Design,” with S. Weisband. CHIMIT 2008, San Diego, CA.
  

• “Sysadmins and the Need for Verification Information,” with A. Durcikova. CHIMIT 2008, San Diego, CA.
  

• “Designing Tools for System Administrators: An Empirical Test of the Integrated User Satisfaction Model,” with S. Weisband and A. Durcikova. LISA 2008, San Diego, CA.

I also found out last week that a paper I wrote while I was in New York with Watson Labs has been accepted to IBM Systems Journal:

• "A Service Delivery Platform for Server Management Services," with the Watson team. IBM Systems Journal, 48:3. August 2009.

Those of you in research and academia understand how important it is to get your research published. I'm very excited about these and hope they will help me during my academic and industry job search. Thanks to all of you for the crossed fingers while I was writing and submitting.

Up next: Final revisions for the above articles, a project investigating text analysis and scheduling to improve sysadmin work, and a project investigating the impact of portal use by sysadmins. I'm also waiting to hear back on another conference submission. (Translation: blah, blah blah... research... blah.)

Yay mountains

Yes, yes I know. Tucson has mountains. It is surrounded by mountains. But they aren't my mountains. I miss seeing the Grand Tetons. Nicole missing Tetons + Xav never seeing Tetons + Grandparents wanting us to visit = Trip to Idaho and Jackson! And really, after the stress of defending and hosting a party at my house, I needed the break.

So on the 4th of July, Xav and I flew into Jackson Hole, WY. After circling the airport for 20 minutes (rumor has it the airport was closed because the Veep was flying in just ahead of us), we landed and my perma-grin began. We checked into our hotel in Teton Village and headed to the top of the mountain on a gondola for an amazing dinner at Couloir*. After dinner, we took a picture and headed down for fireworks.

After exploring Jackson's city square and watching the fireworks, I somehow found room in my stomach for a huckleberry shake and made Xav try some. (Two never-before's for Xav down: Tetons and huckleberries.)

The next day, we met up with the fam (Mom, Jonathan, Tiff, Jon, and Reagan) and went whitewater rafting. Soooo much fun. Especially since the water was high and fast. Thank goodness for wetsuits to help cover the cold. After the rafting trip, we headed into Victor to check out the country club we were somehow born into, Teton Springs**. A few went golfing, but I just wanted to play with Reagan in the water. Because yes, she's my favorite.

We headed back into Jackson that night and crashed pretty hard. The next day, we headed off to Rexburg via Yellowstone. The drive was beautiful, yet strangely wildlife free. We stuck around to watch Old Faithful blow and explored some stinky hot springs.


















After pulling into Rexburg, we checked in with Grandma and Grandpa Forsgren and then headed to visit Grandma Rammell. On Monday, GG Forsgren took us to see Big Springs and Mesa Falls. I had forgotten how beautiful my old stomping grounds are.














On the way back to Jackson to fly out, we stopped at the Emporium in Driggs for a fresh lime freeze and went up the mountain to Grand Targhee. We finally made it home Tuesday night after being stuck in the airport, but it was great to get out of the Tucson heat and back to the mountains. Thanks again to our family for driving up to meet us and Grandma and Grandpa for hosting us!


* Xavier is a major foodie and since meeting, we've tried to go to a fancy restaurant as part of each vacation. My family doesn't understand at all, but one amazing meal every once in a while is worth it. We'll even cut the trip short a day just to fit it into the budget.
** My grandpa is a mean negotiator and when he sold a bunch of farm land to a bunch of developers to build a hoity-toity golf resort, he got them to give all of his kids and grandkids a gratis lifetime membership. Thanks, grandpa!

Blogger Awards

Even though I haven't had the time - or creativity - to post in my blog, don't you think for a minute that I haven't had time to read others' blogs. Somehow, on the strength of past posts, Julia gave me a blogging award. Well, it did the trick and has motivated me to start blogging again. (Well, that, and the completion of my dissertation revisions.) And so here is my list of blogs that must be read every day before work can commence. Please note that in the interest of time, I haven't listed my honorable mentions... those can be found along the sidebar.

• See More Cemers. I guess you could say I knew Julia back in the day, and yet somehow, we just didn't realize how damn funny and alike we are. (Well, okay, so she's funny and witty and I just hope to be funny and witty. Details.) Someday, we'll end up in the same place again and have way more fun than we're allowed. Like Vegas for our 30th birthdays.
  
• Starting Anew. After following some random trail of blogging links, I landed on Kelly's blog and have been hooked. We haven't actually met in person, but she's from Tucson and is an educated, newly married LDS woman. I love reading her blog (er, blogs, see next) and seeing her thoughts. While we're at it, let's all congratulate her on surviving ANOTHER Bar Exam. Ouch. Congrats on the massage and Cold Stone, too. Those are hard earned and much deserved.
• Shake What Ya Mama Gave Ya. Kelly again. This is her weight-loss and exercise blog and I love reading it... even if all it does is make me feel guilty for sleeping in.
  
• Thoroughly Here. This is an old friend from elementary/jr. high whose blog I randomly found one day. I love hearing about her family and really appreciate all of the thought she puts into her blog postings about things like being a wife, home birth, and raising children. I've discovered we dissect problems in similar ways and I'm sure that when I have babies, I'll be going back and reading her analyses - and probably deferring to her judgement when I don't have time to think about it myself. Thanks for the Cliff Notes!
  
• The Alleman Family. This is my little sister's blog. I'll admit that most of the time, I'm really hoping for more pictures of Reagan. I have turned into one of those crazy aunts that calls their neices "my girl." Shush. She's cute. And she's my girl.
  

MIA

Sorry to ignore you all for so long, but revisions are due to my advisor ASAP. In the meantime, thanks to Jill for the cool link to Wordle.