Success at last!

After battling superhuman obstacles (it felt like at times) to get version B for my dissertatation experiment ready and working in time for my SECOND attempt at giving it to my pilot test people Oct. 21, I finally succeeded in getting a working version of it uploaded onto the computers just in time for this past Tuesday's pilot test 4:00-6:00 pm. After finishing only minutes before the subjects arrived, I hadn't even had time myself to check to see if the program didn't have some deadly unknown flaw, and I had horrible premonitions of disaster. But the group of 9 subjects sat there for their hour yesterday, clicking through the menus with only a few problems - minor issues that can be fixed before the next group comes tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 23.

To put it in some perspective, getting ready with version B for this semester has been my Mount Everest this semester in terms of hours of work and psychological block. All the other tasks ahead now are smaller peaks to climb by comparison. I tested version A successfully last fall and spring, but my experiment requires TWO versions to compare - A and B. Getting Version A ready was a snap compared to the 60-odd pages of computer coding I ended up creating for the deceptively simple version B! I started work on B in February. That's how long this has been hanging over me. At times, I thought it would never come into being.

If it weren't enough my having the huge preparation load itself, the week threw me a lot of curve balls. First of all, I didn't have my own computer. I was set back about two days over this past weekend getting ready for Tuesday because all the files from my final flurry of computer work for the FIRST pilot test last week was inaccessible since both my computer AND the back-up disc I'd been saving material on went on the fritz together Oct. 16 just before the pilot test. So, this weekend, I've had to laboriously retype over two days worth of work from print-outs just to get back to where I was Oct. 16. (read an earlier posting for the gory details)

What made this second run even more "fun" was that, meanwhile, I was totally dependent on campus computer facilities. They closed at 5:00 pm both Friday and Saturday (stealing valuable prep time from the project I could have done at home those two eveings). Then, Monday, a class of about 50 students invaded the lab I was working in and were about to bump me off the computer, but I begged the instructor to let me stay since my home computer was broken and my experiment had to be ready the next day! (She took mercy on me and let me keep working.)

The University has cut back radically on the Macintosh computers in nearly every lab the past two years till there are really only about three places on campus I can work now. (The program has been developed exclusively on Macs.) One of them, the Education lab, closed at 9:00, so I got kicked out of there Monday night. The next place I went to work, the English building lab, closed at midnight, so after getting kicked out of there, I rushed over to the main Student Union lab, only to find they have ended their 24-hour service and now also close at midnight! Still hoping to get another couple of hours work in before bed, I trudged over to the last open lab on campus, the one in the library open till 3:00 am, but discovered they too had gotten rid of all their Macs this semester and only have Windows machines. The last straw. I finally had to admit defeat and wandered over to the magazine rack and picked up a New Yorker to read the cartoons and decompress a bit before driving home to sleep.

In the midst of all this nomadic work activity, I had gotten an email from the media coordinator in the building where my next experiment was to be held (Oct. 23) saying repairmen would be in the building all that day and my long-standing lab reservation was being unceremoniously canceled. This was not a trivial problem. Since all my subjects have to come two times for their experiment, canceling any one day means that some won't be able to finish their session #2 and others won't be able to begin their session #1 before the last session Oct. 28, nullifying one session for about half of my people.

(I think I am going to dump the work "Perils" in the title of this blog. It has only seemed to attract more of them!) Fortunately, I heard via email today that the media office has found - at my very determined insistance - a replacement lab for us to use, so this Thursday's experiment looks like it's on again. But any time there's any little change in an experiment date, time or location, you tend to lose subjects.

All I can say after these last 7 days is ... whew!! I have passed a major milestone, but the price in sweat and anxiety and obstacles has made it a very mixed success. I'm ready for a little less interesting life in the next couple of months ...

Just a note about last Thursday's first pilot test. (It's part of a series of experiments lasting till Oct. 28, but the first one was the last Thursday Oct. 16.)

I was feeling pretty confident about noon that Thursday. I had finished all the final coding (computer programming) for the experiment to be given later on at 4:00 that afternoon and figured I could debug it for another three hours or so and be ready to go. No sweat! Well, as you can read below, debugging (getting the bugs out) often takes as long as the initial coding time. You have the instructions all written for the computer, but you have to tediously wipe out little (and not so little) errors one by one: run it, correct, run, correct, run, correct ... hours at a time sometimes.

By 2:45, I realized that I wasn't going to have a working version ready by 3:30, when I absolutely, definitely had to get out of the house and to the computer lab for 4:00. Plan B: work up a slightly simpler version of the program that at least WORKED so that the first group would have something other than an apology to greet them when all 8 of them showed up at the lab.

Then, it was 3:30, and even that wasn't working! Plan C? I was racking my brain for some other face-saving plan. OK, I would take along the semi-functional version I had and demonstrate what they WOULD be doing next time if they chose to return. At least they could see how my popup menus worked and what the hypertext (program) looked like and maybe be encouraged to stick with me for two more sessions.

Then, disaster! I put in my usual diskette (Zip disc) to save my latest version on to take with me, and ... the disk got stuck in the computer and wouldn't come out. Restarting the computer didn't kick it out as it was supposed to. So, I opened the computer up to take the disk out manually like I'd seen in the repair shop, but ... no luck. So, my last 3 days of intensive coding were totally unavailable - neither on the computer itself or on the back-up disk that I had carefully saved to every time I reached a new stage. (Backing up is supposed to save you from such moments!)

So, feeling utterly defeated, I drove to the lab to meet the harsh stares of eight strangers who would NOT be happy to be told they had wasted their time coming. (And would likely not volunteer to return.) Then, I remembered a Plan B I had used last Spring when I also couldn't get my version ready in time. I would use the old pilot test version from Fall 2002. At least it worked! And at least it was a real experimental version that collected real data! (So what if I already had enough data from that particular version. At least my SUBJECTS wouldn't waste their time. They were required to get 2 hours of experimental credit, so I would at least give them that.)

So, in spite of the last-minute panic, things turned out relatively smoothly. (I didn't tell my Thursday subjects they weren't using the second version I had planned for them to use.) They sat quietly and browsed my hypertext for the required hour, then filled out some forms and went home. The next morning, Friday, I took my offending home computer into the campus repair office, where it sits at this moment. A new Zip drive is being installed that will hopefully be more reliable. Meanwhile, I am forced to do all my work at school this weekend. Great timing for a computer malfunction!

This weekend, I have my work cut out for me and am sitting at this very moment in the computer lab in the Education building working on the debugging that wasn't done by Thursday at 4:00. The next deadline is this TUESDAY at 4:00, so that gives me parts of three days. Let's keep our fingers crossed ...

Paul (several perils later)

Well, the bandages are off; the little ugly clots have been gently washed off, and the scar looks ... well, like a scar, but pinkish and not quite so horrifying with a bit of hair over it. Actually, that's the least of my worries at the moment.

By some freakish coincidence, the picture for October on my historic travel poster calendar has a 1950's prop plane (a Constellation) flying right at Brazil by moonlight. (You can see Rio's Sugar Loaf in the distance and the twinkling lights of Rio beckoning the moonlit airliner. (It's an old Air France poster, by the way, but don't tell John Ashcroft!)

Metaphorically, I, too am headed straight for Brazil this month, getting my computer "environment" about Salvador da Bahia, Brazil ready for (immediately) a pilot test run this THURSDAY (Oct. 16) and (in November) the first full-scale experiment up at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

I should be working on the programming for it RIGHT NOW, but I am in full-blown procrastination and thought it was EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for unseen people out there (and perhaps no one at all) to catch up on the trivia of my life. And if my pilot test in two days goes down the toilet because I took this time out, well, there are PRIORITIES in life, folks! Many people live an entire life without experiencing the fleeting joys of ... procrastination, and I intend to "carpere diem" - or several wasted hours out of the diem - to the full!

Anyway, my superego is screaming at me to resume my work, so, alas, I must away ... Parting is such sweet sorrow, as young Shakespeare would say.

Paul

Good news!

The post-op examination with the nurse this afternoon showed that the margins around the skin cancer "tumor" were cancer free - i.e. Dr. Panos got all the cancer the first time last Wednesday (Oct. 1). I was a bit apprehensive that, with the stiches now taking and the wound healing, he would have to reopen the wound and keep on a-diggin', but thankfully, that won't have to be now.

Little over a week to go now until the first big deadline for my dissertation experiment this semester. Next Thursday, Oct. 16 the first group of subjects will be coming into the computer lab to work on my computer program to teach Brazilian culture. It's only a pilot test, but it's the first time I'll be testing the second "condition" of my experiment. (I'm comparing two conditions. The first one I pilot-tested last Fall, but I was preparing to pilot-test the second condition last Spring, when Dad entered his terminal phase and I had to call it off.) Once I've tested the second condition, I'll be close to ready for the actual experiment - which will use both conditions.

I'll either be ready, or I won't! It's hard to tell with computer coding. You can be inches away from done, then encounter some problem that requires hours more debugging time. But I'm feeling somewhat optimistic I can be ready. If worse comes to worst, I can just email the first group for Oct. 16 that there have been "technical difficulties", and I'll reschedule them. But I also increase the risk that I'll lose a few subjects that way, so it really pays to be ready on schedule.

Anyway, back to the grind ... :-)

(For the major news, read my previous blog posting from Thursday. This one I'm doing a day later just because I feel like it!)

A couple of websites you might want to check out if your own life at the moment is deadly dull and of little use to humanity and you crave the comfort of finding out someone else's life is just as deadly dull and of as little use to humanity:

a) My personal homepage/website:

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/p-sundb/homepage/

b) A page about my experiment written for my subjects:

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/p-sundb/portexper.html

c) The two sites I made in memoriam for Dad and Mom:

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/p-sundb/EAS.html
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/p-sundb/MWS.html

(If you don't see these web addresses underlined (linked) on your screen, you can always COPY and PASTE them into the http: line at the top of your browser.)

I took the surgery bandage off finally and found a stitched-up wound that Dr. Frankenstein's monster might envy for its "subtlety" or that might get me a bit part on an "X-Files" TV episode where aliens implant tracking devices inside humans' foreheads ... It actually fits quite nicely under a regular band-aid, which is where I'm going to leave it until it looks less PG-13. The aching head has subsided quite a bit. The aspirin really makes me forget I had surgery - until I frown or use my forehead muscles for any expression. Then I realize someone did something to me up there! I guess I'll have to pretend I've just had botox treatments and can't move a muscle in my face ...

Today is the second day after the operation, and I think I've had an almost normal day - shampooed normally, got out of the house and did errands as if I didn't carry the "mark of Cain" around with me everywhere. (What, me self-conscious?!) I suspect people are thinking the bandage on my forehead is a sign of late-stage alcoholism where I stumble around, fall down and knock my head against curbs and that kind of thing. (Or spousal abuse, perhaps?)

Scar-rily yours,

Paul

The trip up to Wisconsin and my surgery are now behind me.

I drove up to Madison last Friday (Sept. 26) both to check out campus for my Monday appointment - where to park etc. - and submit an application for using human subjects at UW for my experiment. Monday was my pre-scheduled meeting with the three faculty members in the Portuguese program at UW. In between over the weekend, I visited an old nursing colleague of Mom's from Bahrain days (1952-55) up in Fond du Lac, Margaret Pennings, stayed with my Mom's youngest brother Tom and his wife in their home in the woods near Plymouth, and visited with one of Mom's old church friends from Sheboygan Falls, Carol Debbink. (At my request, she and some friends at church had gathered a lot of historical articles, papers, etc. about Mom's days at Falls Reformed Church, and I wanted to thank her in person.)

Sunday night I stayed over in Madison to be ready for my appointments the next morning. I had to remind myself that I wasn't really there to PROVE myself (the department had already approved of my experiment) but to meet faculty, get students to sign up for the experiment later in November, and check out the computer lab facilities to see if everything was there to run my experiment successfully. (It was.) Thirteen students signed up for more information, and Prof. Sapega said she'd pass out my flier to the 30-odd people who show up for the Portuguese conversation table on campus. I'm hoping for 20-30 subjects from UW, so every person helps! All in all, I'm happy the way things turned out. I did the preparations I needed and now have a much clearer idea of what I'll be working with when I return in November to conduct the experiment. And now I'm a known quantity to the three professors who agreed to let me come, too.

About my surgery. Yesterday, Oct. 1, I came into the spanking-new Carle Cosmetic Surgey clinic at 9:00 am. After giving me local anesthetic around the mole on my forehead, Dr. Panos took about 10-15 minutes cutting out the under-the-skin area my dermatologist had biopsied in September and putting stitches in to close up the wound. A pathologist in the same clinic (out of my view) examined the tissue and said that, from a preliminary view, it looked like they had gotten all the area with the squamous cell carcinoma. I am to return in a week, however, to make sure that the final tests show the same welcome results and to have my scar looked at by a nurse.

Yesterday after surgery, I stayed home all day, napping or reading, but trying to keep on a normal eating schedule. A friend called up every so often to see how I was doing. The Tylenol they recommended for the headache pain dulled it a bit, but not enough. I was pretty miserable most of the evening until I fell asleep for the night. Today, I've been taking regular aspirin, which seems to take care of the pain more effectively. And I've been out and doing my regular activities without much trouble, so I hope that's the end of my surgical "perils" for a long, long time to come!

My big goal - and worry - at the moment, is getting ready for my second "pilot test" of my dissertation experiment (sort of a dry run before the real experiment). The first session is scheduled on campus here for October 16, two weeks away, and there's a lot of computer work to be done before I'm ready for that group of subjects! Keep me in your thoughts in the next couple of weeks!

-Paul