My format review came back yesterday. That was pretty fast! Luckily, there aren't to many format changes. Mainly some of my header styles need to be changed. I'm working on that right now. I also found something they missed. Page numbers are supposed to be at the top right corner of the page, with a double space between the number and the main text. But beginning with chapter 3, it was only single spaced. So I'm changing that as well. I want to get all these format issues out of the way before I have to make content changes after the defense.

I turned in my dissertation for formatting on Thursday last week. I was pretty frantic until then, working until 7PM every night to get everything done. Friday I was busy as well, making copies for all my committee members. But this weekend was very calm and stress-free. Kelly and I relaxed and played around for most of it. We made dinner for Kelly's family on Saturday and it turned out great. Kelly made an awesome soup, and I made some big pumpkin muffins. As a side dish, I went out and picked up this super spicy kung pao cabbage from our local chinese restaurant (which we love because the food is great and it's usually empty).

Now for the next two weeks my priority is to create my defense talk and practice!

I just finished chapter 7! But there's no time to celebrate. The format review deadline is next Thursday, so I still have to format chapters 3-7 and create all the pre-text material (like tables of content and stuff).

I'm almost finished with my final chapter, but with all the exposition, I thought it needed a few descriptive figures. Here's one I decided to draw quickly today. I'm not really all that happy with it because my drawing skills in Illustrator suck, but I think the figure is adequate for my dissertation. Any comments?

I don't really like My Morning Jacket all that much ("Wordless Chorus" makes me want to put a power drill to my head!), but I'm really starting to dig their new live album, Okonokos. The sound quality of the recording is amazing, and much better than their studio recordings IMHO. I've also been listening to a similar new band called Catfish Haven, not to be confused with Catfish Hunter. Sometimes I can't tell the two bands apart.

This guy must have known I was taking a picture because he opened his mouth as he swam past. 

These are some deadly frogs, but they look plastic to me! 

The Aquarium of the Pacific is in downtown Long Beach, right next to the ocean. It is one of the nicest I've ever been to. Here's a funny looking sea turtle.

Kelly and I spent the weekend in Long Beach, CA. She was running the half marathon there, and she was really impressive. Long Beach is a pretty nice town. There was barely anyone on the beach. 

Well, they found my reciept and I was able to apply for graduation today. That's a big load off my back. In other news, I've been writing well on this final chapter. I probably only have 3-4 pages single-spaced pages left. I'm right on schedule to finish all the writing by Oct. 20, leaving me plenty of time for revisions and formatting before the official university Format Review deadline.

Applying for graduation at ASU is a major pain in my ass. I tried to apply in mid-September. I paid my graduation fee and went to the registrar, but they had no record of my comp exam. It turns out the geology department doesn't finish the paperwork, and never tells the student this. So then I waste a bunch of time getting signatures, and turning the form into the grad college. It takes a week or two to process, so I'm trying to apply for graduation again. But in the meantime I've misplaced my paperwork. I can always fill out the forms again, but I'm missing the reciept for my graduation fee. So I go back to cashiering services today, hoping they can print out another reciept for me, but of course that's not how they do it. I have to fill out another form, and they have to look for their physical copy. I don't remember the exact day I paid either, so apparently they have to look through the reciepts for the entire month of September! Why can't they just look up my account in the computer? I don't know, but that will take another couple of days for them to find it. Meanwhile, the deadling for applying for graduation is next Monday, and this whole process is really starting to piss me off. I have more important things to worry about.

I've set a date for my defense. November 9th.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I got up and finished reading the last 50 or so pages of The Winter of Our Discontent. It's a wierd book and very different from the other Steinbeck I've read. It's set in 1960 instead of the '30s or '40s, so it has a more modern point of view. Most of the book is dialogue, using lots of slang and probably jingles and slogans too. And it doesn't help that the main character, Ethan Hawley, is something of a joker. What's tricky about the book is that what's going on in the dialoge is not what's really going on, so there were several parts where I was confused about the plot.

Let me explain. The main theme of the book is how business is at odds with human nature. To be successful in business, one needs to be calculating, efficient, and only think about the bottom line, but to be a successful human being, one needs to be caring, empathetic, and understanding. Hawley begins the book as a grocery clerk, and basically makes the choice to be a businessman rather than a human, and to do this he ends up fucking over some people that he really cares about. But he has to do whatever he can to win back the family fortune, right? So in much of the dialogue he is lying, playing dumb, or has an ulterior motive. He struggles with the guilt of his decisions, but also realizes that humans are both cruel and kind, depending on the situation.

The other main theme is that capitalism is going to destroy American "values", represented by Ethan's two kids. True business acumen breeds two types of people: cheats and snitches. This is more of an interpretation on my part, but it seems more and more obvious near the end of the book, and it's hard not to be disgusted with the kids once everything plays out. But morally, Hawley can't punish them because he's done both!

Unfortunately, I can't really recommend this book to anyone. I think it's an interesting picture of post-WWII America, but it's not really applicable today. The implicit racism and sexism in the novel don't exist in the same way nowadays. Also, the importance of family lineage and heritage that drives most of what Hawley is trying to accomplish doesn't apply today. And the "insights" into capitalism, like how a criminal with wealth is just called a capitalist, are common knowledge today. We know that God does not balance everything out in the end like Adam Smith said. A lot of people don't even believe in God now. There are just so many important political and social events that happened after the book was written.

I will say there was one part in the middle were Hawley was going to do something really bad, and had planned it for several chapters, and right when he was about to go through with it circumstances made him abort the plan. That part was pretty exciting.