Greg and Kat's blog

Many people have asked what I am doing on my sabbatical (officially “study leave“). I guess I should say a little more. According to the University,

The purpose of study leave for Lecturers… is to provide a period of time during which the individual is relieved of his/her employment duties in order to complete a project or course of study which will enhance his/her work at the University in the future.

Sounds good. What I officially proposed to do to make the world a better place is:

• Learn more about programming language design and implementation, so I can teach CMPT 383 (Comparative Programming Languages) and possibly CMPT 379 (Principles of Compiler Design) in the future. This is something I have always been interested in, but one of the gaps left by not doing a full undergrad in CS. (I was mostly math.)
• Revise the distance ed version of CMPT 165 (Intro to the Internet and WWW). The old version is a little crufty and has been shoved into a “breadth course” role that it wasn’t intended for.
• Finish the distance ed version of CMPT 120 (Intro to CS and Programming). That has been almost done for a couple of years, and needs to be polished off.
• Get back to the biological modeling stuff that has been shoved to the side of my desk for two years while I have been undergrad director.
• Continue to participate in the School’s recruitment and outreach activities.

And the unofficial stuff:

• To get to the “more about programming languages” stuff (and because it will be interesting), I intend to learn a programming language a month.
• I’m trying to convince Amanda that she needs a CMPT faculty member to do international recruiting and partnership stuff. (Her new title is “Manager of International Recruiting and Partnerships”.) Basically, I don’t care where she needs me to go: I’m willing to literally go to the ends of the earth for the University… as long as the University foots the bill and I can take a few extra days to tourist-it-up.
• A few games may be played, particularly for the first two weeks. I haven’t taken more than a few days off (to go to North Carolina) for about 20 months. I’m not going to feel even the slightest bit bad about a couple of weeks of god-game addiction.
• I probably should figure out what I want to be when I grow up. In particular, does that involve getting a PhD, or climbing some administrative ladder, or some other career entirely?

As of next week, I’m done my two year stint as Undergrad director (officially, “Director of Undergraduate Programs”). Ted is taking over, and I have no doubt that he’ll to a fine job.

Overall, I’m reasonably pleased with what I accomplished. There are a bunch of things that I’m happy about:

• We introduced concentrations to our major and honors programs. This adds some value to our degrees (e.g. students can go to EA with a “concentration in Computer Graphics and Multimedia” on their resume) but requires just about no work to implement. [Margo’s idea, my push to implement]
• We actually now have a curriculum! This is the first time we have had any standardized expectations for our courses (other than the calendar descriptions). It’s not much, but it’s an important start. [all me, baby]
• We introduced a learning skills workshop in (at least) CMPT 120/126. I think this is the most effective student retention activity in the university. [Diana, with moral support from me]
• Removed our external breadth requirements, falling back on (and removing duplication with) the now-universal University breadth requirements. This will prevent a lot of confusion about which requirement did what. [me, advisors, the undergrad committee]
• Simplified entrance requirements, making it easier for colleges to offer the courses needed to transfer to SFU, and faster for SFU students to transfer in. Kept enough that we still have a decent picture of the students’ ability, but eliminated the hoop-jumping. [me and the committee]
• Countless other cleanups to the calendar. [mostly me, annoyingly]
• We met our admissions targets in 2007 and 2008. That leaves us well positioned to raise our entrance requirements next year.
• The School has better relationships with Student Services. Both Amanda and I worked on getting our faces known over there. She got a shiny new job out of it. I just get asked to be on more committees.
• The Software Systems program was introduced on the Surrey campus. [mostly Tom]
• I started a push to reform/replace CMPT 150 and 250 (our hardware/system courses). It remains to be seen if this really gets off the ground, but there’s some hope. [me and Sasha]
• Our student records are now paperless, thanks to an electronic record keeping thing (except legacy files). [Nathan]
• The recruitment team has several more cool demos (mostly unplugged) that can be pulled out for recruitment fairs and open houses. [me, Dom, Santi]
• After Amanda left for her new position, I spent 6 months as (what I have decided to put on my CV as) “recruiting and advising Team Lead” or maybe “Director of Enrollment Management”. That was a hassle, but I learned a lot. I understand even more now why Amanda wanted me to do it, but I’m still going to get her for talking me into it.
• Somewhere in there, I taught 6 courses (4 × CMPT 470, 2 × CMPT 120) with reasonable success.

Actually, I have to figure out how to condense all of this onto my CV in a reasonable way (i.e. like 3 sentences). All-in-all, I’m pretty pleased with my term. There are a few “I wish…” things, but not too many. Now… sabbatical!

I am finally finished the marking of the CMPT 470 projects. It usually takes me a week (or maybe a little more) to get them done. This semester, the world conspired against me. They were in for a week before I even looked at them.

But in exchange for my lack of 470-mindshare, I live in a nicer place, we had a successful Shad Valley intern for two weeks, we have a new manager (in Amanda’s old position), two co-op students have been hired, and none of our staff quit. It has been a really rough couple of weeks. This quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has been on my mind a lot:

The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

I bought the ticket, and I took the ride. I’m sure I’m a better person for it. But mostly, I’m ready for my sabbatical.

I finished the marking about 20 minutes ago, and if I’m to be honest, I’m already fairly drunk. Hold on… I can still do that “close your eyes, hold out your hand, and touch your nose” thing. It’s probably because the last drink hasn’t hit my bloodstream yet, though.

The realistic life plans #1 and #2 are going to have to wait longer. This is a companion to the fanciful Life Plan #3. First, the context…

I went out to Hats Off Day on Saturday. It’s the Burnaby Heights festival-thing. They close Hastings from Gamma to Boundary and have your general civic festivities: a parade, car show, local merchants, etc.

What I didn’t get many pictures of were the PR booths. These are pretty common anywhere there is a gathers. They are used by groups that want to get the word out one way or the other: BC Hydro Powersmart, local politicians, emergency preparedness, and so on. I did get a picture of the kids activity that Parks Canada had: kids put down forts and trading posts on the map and then they were told why it was/wasn’t a good place for one.

While I was out there, fresh off the SFU Open House, I started to think about the University’s public outreach activities. Or more to the point, our lack of them. Core premise to the line of thought here: the vast majority of the University’s budget comes out of the public purse in one way or another. (Sorry, but your tuition dollars are only like a third of the cost of your education.) The public should feel involved in what we do.

This brings us to Life Plan #4. It involves getting job that doesn’t actually exist: SFU Outreach Coordinator. The job would be to put together a roadshow that could go around to these things and show the community what we do, and subtly attempt to convince them that it’s important.

Many faculty members already do school visits (for their kids classes or whatever) and this might be a way to support those a little too. Presumably, this would also be the point person for the Open House.

If it was me, I’d put together a list of a dozen or two faculty members that had demos that could be taken out (either by them or their grad students) and would be understandable down to about 8 years old. There were a bunch of these at the Open House; it shouldn’t be too hard to find them. If there’s an understandable open question at the end of the demo, all the better.

At each community festival we can get to, take one or two research demos, preferably with faculty/grads who are actually part of that community. I’d pair that with some kind of “what SFU does” posters to give people an idea of what a university is actually for. We’d probably need swag or a prize draw to get people to the table too.

So there’s Life Plan #4: I want a job that doesn’t exist, paid for out of a budget that doesn’t exist, to do something that isn’t done.

My lectures this semester are three hour chunks on Wednesday evenings. Evening lectures are late, but that’s not too big a deal. The problem is the three hour marathon.

Lecturing is more draining that people probably realize. There’s a lot of pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly, and staring into an overhead projector. Three hours at a stretch is pretty long.

Of course it’s mentally draining. The problem is talking while trying to figure out what you’re going to say next. Not saying something retarded in a three-hour span is pretty hard. I have a great deal of sympathy for politicians and celebrities who spend a lot of time on camera: the odds of saying something stupid are really high and that’s naturally the thing that gets remembered.

I think I have stumbled on a winning strategy to not feel like I have been beaten with a stick after three hours. I have been going down to the food course in Harbour Centre and getting a smoothie just before class. I drink it just before/at the start of class

My theory is that the smoothie does two things: keeps me hydrated and keeps the blood sugar up. I haven’t felt too bad after lecture the weeks when I have done that.

A coffee in the morning (which I don’t usually have, so I’m sensitive to the caffeine) seems to help too.

We had the SFU Open House today. It all went down well. I took some pictures that I’m quite pleased with. My only complaint would have been the attendance—it wasn’t as busy as two years ago—50% more people would have been awesome.

I’m putting the blame for that squarely on Media and Public Relations. There wasn’t nearly as much advertising as last time, and I think that was the difference. I really do hate media and PR. We have had this conversation with them many times: “Hey, CS has this cool story. Maybe we can get it publicised?” “Sure. We’ll write an article for the SFU News.” “*seethe* Not publicised to SFU people that are already here: to the outside world! With the ‘media’?!? The ‘public’ that you’re supposed to be ‘relating’ with?!?” “Oh yeah… uh… *wanders off*”

I’m sure there was a very nice article about the Open House in the SFU News. But, that’s not what I’m here to rant about.

During the Open House, I spent most of my time at the “unplugged” table. Our “unplugged” demos are demonstrations of CS concepts that don’t use a computer, and were inspired by CS Unplugged which I love very much.

At one point, a woman came up with her kid. I have no real idea how old the child was because I have no interest: still had a diaper, but could probably walk okay, and talk a bit. 18 months?

She proceeded to heave the kid up onto the table and start futzing with one of the demos, so I started to explain it to her. There were a lot of things wrong with what came next. These are the things that make me subscribe to Childfree Ghetto.

1. The kids shoes weren’t pristinely clean. The white tablecloth was (up until just then, at least).
2. The child didn’t have the motor control to manipulate the game, and certainly wasn’t old enough to make any sense out of it. Having the kid near the game was pointless.
3. The mother used the child’s presence to avoid actually thinking. She clearly wasn’t stupid, so could have done this thing that 10 year olds can figure out. If she wasn’t interested, she could have wandered off. Instead, she just glanced around and went with “What should we do, Jason/Madison/Nicholas/Samantha/Whateveridontcare?” The child thought we should suck on our fingers. Waste of my time.
4. The mother had no interest in keeping the child from breaking anything. My as-subtle-as-I-get “I don’t really know how well this thing is put together” was not a sufficient clue to keep her child from leaning it’s full weight on the game.
5. I can only imagine the whole thing was part of some poorly-thought-out attempt to raise a gifted child. Read to your kid and leave me out of it, ferchrissake.
6. During all of this, her SUV-style stroller was left arranged so it blocked both table and aisle space.

There were probably other things too. Honestly, I think #3 bugged me the most. Procreating does not allow you to waive your right to higher brain function.

Apparently, we’re looking for a TA for CMPT 275 in the summer and are considering undergrads. Email Tracy (tbruneau@) if you’re interested.

I know that a blog post with the title “Life Plan #3” should be preceded by life plans numbered 1 and 2. The thing is: life plans one and two have some actual realistic possibility of happening, so they aren’t as fun.

SFU’s CIO (Chief Information Officer) just quit. Or he “quit”. The rumours aren’t really clear. In any event, he don’t work here any more.

The CIO is basically an Associate VP Academic by another name. The position is responsible for the campus network infrastructure (including wireless), phones, computer store, email, WebCT, and a bunch of other stuff. Wait… there’s something else in there that’s important… what was it again… oh yeah!

The CIO is responsible for our information. The last guy was responsible for the purchase and subsequent support of PeopleSoft/SIMS/goSFU. You know: the millions-annually albatross around the University’s neck? Go ahead and read the “Peoplesoft in use” section on Wikipedia; I’ll wait. We bought in several years after those very public experiences. I have mentioned the SIMS project here before.

Amanda and a few others have opined that I should apply for the job. They forget two things: (1) I’m not qualified and (2) I don’t want to. I’m not qualified because one would need a hell of a lot more experience with managing both employees (I’d guess the headcount is easily >100) and budget (>$10M) than I have. Also, I’m pretty sure being an undergrad director isn’t sufficient qualification for being an associate VP.

The reasons I don’t want to do it are many. The biggest one is the most obvious: PeopleSoft. The only way to get away from PeopleSoft is to spend some money on another solution. There’s no money to do anything else because PeopleSoft costs so damned much. The person who gets the job is doomed to either spend even more money (in a time of cuts), or be the guy that keeps the shitty solution to the University’s biggest IT problem.

But (because Amanda knows me that well) I have been thinking about it. I’m the kind of guy that looks at the “Careers” section in the newspaper and thinks “CEO of a sporting goods company… yeah, I could do that. Maybe I should apply.”

If I had the job, I’d stop all development on SIMS and skim a quarter of the SIMS budget off for internal development of a replacement. The replacement would have to happen piecemeal, which would require a very clever architecture that could interface with the existing database. If other Universities in BC were willing to team up, it would make sense to join forces since our business practices are mostly similar and we could share most of the code.

Also, there’d be some modernization of the core campus IT infrastructure. Things like virtual machines and AFS would allow real-time replication of essential services across campuses, and leave us much less vulnerable to catastrophic system failures.

In summary: if they don’t hire in the first round and open up applications a second time, I’m going for it.

In week 2 of the semester, I started blogging for CMPT 376. Since then, I have made 37 posts with an average of 284 words per post (not counting this post).

If I had blogged thrice-weekly during that time, there should have been 36 posts. Somehow an extra post slipped in there. The offender seems to be a throwaway post about gaining back an hour of my jetlag.

I managed to more-or-less keep the Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule too, but certainly wasn’t too anal about a little drifting:

Posts by day of week: MWF schedule kind of worked.

I also allowed Ted to mock me during lectures. I have clearly earned my full 5% class participation marks and will appeal anything less. As the one who handles mark appeals, I’m pretty sure I will emerge victorious.

That makes my final mark in the course… 5%. Hrm. Clearly I haven’t taken the most efficient route to passing the course. I guess it’s time to do what every student who is about to fail miserably does right before the final: email the instructor and ask if the course is going to be curved. (If you thought the thing after the colon in that sentence was going to be “study”, shame on you.)

Certainly the most surprising thing for me from the course is how really easy the daily writing exercises (a.k.a. blog posts) were. It turns out that I actually think three things a week. Writing close to 300 words about each one didn’t feel like work at all.

I am firmly convinced that writing is like any form of physical activity: the more you do it, the easier it gets. The dailies were a good way to exercise the writing muscle.

So, if I ever end up teaching 376, I will certainly keep the daily writing. I probably wouldn’t do as much free-writing as Ted did, not because I don’t see the value, but doing it in lecture time just isn’t my style. I would probably keep the assignment structure more-or-less the same as well. The thing that would scare me about the course is that, even having seen Ted give most of his lectures, I have no idea what I’d say in 150 minutes of lecture per week.

Oh well, let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.

Edit: I thought it might be worth sharing the email I sent to Ted as promised above:

Dear Prof Dr Kirkpetrik,

im a student in ur COMP 376 class. i want 2 know if the class is going to be on curved grading or regular? i am worry about my mark, so i want to know what happens.

Maybe there’s a little hyperbole there, but down around the bottom of a first year class, that’s not totally out of range. As you can see, it’s not just ESL issues, but total lack of attention to detail: prof’s name and course number are incorrect. Also note that the form of the question indicates a level of understanding which means an honest answer to the question (e.g. “not curved”) will not help the student in any way.