Brian's World

Request for Mentor

Things have been going well in the life of Brian, at least decently well. I continue to struggle to iron out the last few efficiencies in my schedule and routine, most of which involve waking up. I can tie this partially to a lack of motivating factors, as well as a race it seems that takes place. Concerto has “debuted” here at RPI, and everyone with a valid RCS id is encouraged to login and check it out. Unfortunately or fortunately, this doesn’t mean that development has stopped. We drew a line and said these are the features required for rev 1, and thats pretty much what we’ve got. There are lots of additional features that we plan on rollout out over the next few days and weeks, and those should all prove to be very exciting.

Looking back and evaluting what goes well and what doesn’t is always effective to a point I feel. Some people spend too much time going back and not enough time moving forward, but others completely forget the past and trudge along making no improvements. I think its time I take a step back and evaluate my social life and how I’ve been doing in the past few months and weeks. It would certainly not be true to say I’ve been the best friend or companion lately, and I could see how that can place a toll on relationships. I’ve been quick to draw the conclusion that this is because I’m busy doing x or y or z, but I’m not 100% sure thats the complete cause. I think there may be something larger at play, where I’ve reached a point where I lack knowledge of where to go from here. Like I don’t have enough data to tell me what steps should be taken next, especially after keeping in mind the limits and boundries I place on things.

This week is submission week to Google Summer of Code, and so far I’ve submitted 2 proposals. One is kind of run of the mill I found a mentoring organization and choose a project on their list that I’m interested. I would be really excited if I got that, but I’m not the expert in the code base and I haven’t spent years writing special plugins or anything for their product like some of the other entrants have. The second proposal I submitted was a little bit out of the park. It didn’t make much sense to me, and it still doesn’t, but I choose ‘Google’ as the mentoring organization. For anyone familiar with GSOC, choosing Google as your mentoring organization is probably one of the dumbest things you can do. They accept under 15 projects, completely random, that they feel are worthy but don’t fall under the umbrella of a larger mentoring organization. One string attached: you need to provide your own mentor. Doh! I had completely missed this on their FAQ page, and as such I got a comment back from Google today telling me to supply a mentor. I don’t believe I have a mentor in the current point in my life, especially when it comes to programming. There is no old wise guy I look to when I’m facing a challenging task or a difficult concept… I hash it out with myself or my peers.

So heres the deal. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested in mentoring me for a project that probably won’t get approved by Google, please contact me ASAP. Like today, right now. Shoot me an email @ bmichalski@gmail.com and we’ll get this thing rolling. if you want to know what you’re signing up to mentor me on… well its super top secret. Of course I’ve uploaded a pdf of my application to Google which describes the concept and the big picture, the very big picture. Here it is: gsoc_concerto.pdf You don’t have to be old to be my mentor, you don’t even have to be that wise.. though I’m sure you are. You should probably know a little bit about program, a little bit about databases, and a lot about data.

In lots of representations of college there seems to be this representation that students have a professor that they are close to, who they seek advice from, etc. I don’t have such a person. I know RPI tries to foster this with its “Academic Advising” program, but it doesn’t work well. Advisors are assigned based on major, not interests.. and are there to serve one purpose to you, check a box in SIS and allow you to register. This GSOC mentoring thing would have been ideal if there was a professor or person I felt close to when it comes to programming or something, but alas there are none.

Time for bed.

Goodnight moon.