A Great Stocking Stuffer

Christopher Walken Does Lady Gaga

Now here's something you don't see everyday.

Research Project

A graduate student and I are working on a videogame experience survey, called the Videogame Experiences Questionnaire or VEQ. Basically we are interested in understanding a few things about people's frequency, preferences and self-reported affects on their lives. We will see if this can be broken down into several factors, which could make it useful to compare to other psychological experiences. Our first article will come out in a professional journal soon. This scale is a revision of the initial attempt.

Survey Gizmo is a very good site for creating and collecting surveys. It is especially good for graduate students. It has a number of powerful features and allows graduate students a number of perks that are usually contained in the for-fee services.

UPDATE: I've changed the picture of the Logo in favor of the one we decided upon. After mocking up a few logos, we got some opinions from various people and settled in this.

A Lego Video 1500 Hours in the Making

How folks could have spent the time for this with no money in the picture is crazy, but the result is amazing.

Your Shot Daily Dozen

A New Face for Art

This is quite interesting. It takes a little over 8 minutes, but it is well worth it with amazement all along the way.

Salt Springs State Park, PA

I had a nice trip to visit my friends Art & Bernadette over the Memorial Day Weekend. It's great to find a new place to explore. Just south of the NY state border is a picturesque little park in PA. The weather was great the entire weekend, and we went over the various trails. Unfortunately the llamas were out of sight, but I'm told they are really there somewhere. The Texas Roadhouse was delicious as usual, and now I know about 5 Guys hamburgers, although not great for those trying to lose weight. We also took in a B-Mets game. Here's hoping that Ypsilanti gets a baseball team after this year's experiment with the Midwest Sliders.

Commencement 2009

Graduation is always a nice experience, despite the long roll call of diplomas. Actually, this event was larger than usual, and we moved along expeditiously. One day I'll get decent regalia (I'm still using the throw-away stuff meant to be used 2-3 times).

Tenure and Promotion!

The good news came on April 30, although I had already left the office. So the envelope was sitting in my mailbox when I came in to the office on Friday May 1. It's nice that the news is in all caps to begin the letter. The process of putting together the dossier takes quite a bit of time, since you have to account for and justify your work in enough detail so that people who know very little about you will get a good sense of your work. It also helps to organize the dossier, so that people will know where to find everything they are looking for. I turned in the whole thing very early in the Fall semester and then simply have to wait as it makes it through all the committees at the university for the tenure process.

I'm very happy to say the least but am also not quite sure what to feel in some ways. There are other mountains to climb, but this is putting a big goal behind me. I will be directing the doctoral program, so there are many goals I have for that. I also want to produce more scholarship, a lot of which is in the works. I have a busy summer, so I can't just rest on my laurels, but I am going to be celebrating in various little ways.

Division 39

I attended the most recent Division 39 spring conference in San Antonio, TX. Many board meetings, presenting a paper with a graduate student, dinner with friends, and my sister came over from Houston. A busy weekend and a nice place to visit.

2009 UDM Research Day & Poster Fair

We had a really nice turn out for the annual poster fair at UDM. It takes a lot of work by a lot of people for this to run smoothly. I'm on the Faculty Development Team which puts this together each year. But most of the credit really goes to the Team chair, Matt Mio, Ph.D. who keeps this ball rolling and herds the cats. This continues to go over well, and perhaps next year we'll be able to expand it significantly.

Following Flight

This is simply a cool link illustrating the flight paths for planes in the U.S. New York is quite flooded, as we might expect and might be the cause for many flight delays.

Valentine's Ice Sculpture

I took these pics next door to Bombadil's. The ice sculpting took place just in time for the cold to return. After a warm week, winter came back. Driving was a pain, but this was one of the better parts of winter.

Obamicon Me

This is a bit of Inaugural fun. Follow the link in the title to the website and create your own Obamicon. You can use the default hope and change stuff or make your own.