and the adventure continues... (at UC Santa Cruz)

I just returned to UC Santa Cruz for the fall quarter. You may recall that I completed my master's degree in June. But because I plan to apply for the Ph.D. program in October, this seemed a good time to work on the remaining course requirements. For those curious, I've enrolled in BME 205 and BME 232 this quarter. One of the instructors for BME 205 is Prof. Haussler, who is well-known in the field of genomics. I'm expecially excited to learn from him.

However, there has been some setbacks. UCSC allows master's students to transfer to the Ph.D. track on completing the requirements for a master's degree. Given that a Ph.D. is easily a multi-year commitment that could also become very expensive, I decided to get an M.S. as a "checkpoint" in the event of a life change that interferes with my studies. During our Memorial Day lunch with Prof. Kang and Prof. Eshraghian earlier this year, they and my parents all agreed this would be a sound plan.

But none of us knew I would no longer be considered a UCSC student as soon as I received my M.S. degree. Due to this, my academic status is in a bit of a limbo. I now have to apply for the Ph.D. program through the standard process and enroll in courses via UCSC Extension rather than the UCSC registrar.

Hope is not all lost as Prof. Eshraghian says he supports my candidacy and has added me to his research group. He also suggested some research areas to explore. So at least I already have some ideas for a thesis. :-)

Summer in review

I spent much of summer on research into machine learning for genomics. Even with assistance from multiple AI tools, genomics models are difficult to debug due to the complex structures in the data sets. Prof. Eshraghian has also added me as a maintainer to his snnTorch project on GitHub. I'm quite honored as I'm not yet a Ph.D. student under his supervision. It probably helps that I have five years of experience as a senior software engineer. In any case, I've been putting aside some time to go through the backlog of open issues and pull requests.

But things have also been a bit bumpy at times. As mentioned earlier, my status as a UCSC student officially ended when I received my master's degree. I now have to wait until the applications for the Ph.D. program to open up in October. However, this ultimately shouldn't have too much of an impact as I was able to get a head start on the research.

We also had to deal with a rodent problem inside our house. You can see this was a serious issue as rodents carry all kinds of diseases. Even though we quickly caught a rat after placing traps, none of us could sleep well until we were sure the rats were gone.

Mom also started having dizzy spells a few days ago. I really hope it's nothing serious. She feels better now but still experiences nausea one in a while. As you can see, the past several days were quite stressful.

I also had to miss out on some events that I had been looking forward to. For example, the UCSC Alumni Association put on a reunion event called "Return to the Redwoods" that ran from August 13 to 15. But the problem is that we already had to drive to UCSC twice for Prof. Eshraghian's group meetings, on the 17th and 25th. I decided to skip the reunion event as I felt bad about asking my parents to give me a ride to Santa Cruz so many times. Seeing that I don't have experience driving on mountain roads, my parents wouldn't have felt comfortable about me going to Santa Cruz alone.

It doesn't help that ridehailing services like Uber and Lyft are prohibitely expensive. I could have eliminated two round trips by arriving on the 13th for the event and then leaving on the 25th after meeting with Prof. Eshraghian's group. However, the campus is typically less active during summer, and I didn't want to spend a whole two weeks there with little to do. It's ultimately not a big deal because the UCSC Alumni Association hosts the event once a year.

I also have to miss on my childhood friend Connie's 10th anniversary event for her bakery as that is scheduled to take place after school starts for me. For those unaware, Connie started her own bakery during the summer of 2016. Similar to the above case, I would have to make an additional two round trips between UCSC and my house. On the bright side, there are other exciting events at UCSC in the next several weeks. It's not the same as catching up with childhood friends, but life doesn't always work out according to our plans. FOMO sucks, but c'est la vie.

In other news...

As this is the start of a new school year, I thought this would be a good time to give my blog a fresh lick of paint and a more modern look and feel. Blogger also deprecated the original theme some time ago, so this was the perfect opportunity for an upgrade. It's going to take some time to get used to the new design, but it certainly looks nice so far. One thing for sure is I'm going to miss the "Minima" theme. It has served me well.

Currently playing: Doom 64 (2020 re-release)

the worst hide-and-seek game ever...

I had gotten up late last night to use the restroom when I saw a rat scurry across the floor. It seems the rat had gotten in through a loose panel under our bathtub. I managed to the trap the rat in one room when I saw a second rat emerge from the same place. To make matters worse, there were scampering sounds coming from our pantry. I didn't see anything but couldn't guarantee there wasn't a third rat in there.

As you can imagine, this was a very serious concern as rodents carry all kinds of diseases. Hantavirus is a particularly nasty bugger. I reluctantly decided to wake my parents up because I was afraid the rats would enter their bedroom and bite them. It pained me to do this because my parents are often busy and don't get much sleep, but they understood this was an emergency.

Dad and I spent much of the day checking for rats and moving our furniture around to eliminate potential hiding spots. We were able to catch and remove one rat in the evening after placing a bunch of traps. I've got to say this was my least favorite hide-and-seek game ever. However, there could be up to two rats that are still unaccounted for. I really hope they're not in the house anymore. :\

September 23 update: It's been four days, and we are confident there are no more rats inside. I'm glad they're gone as none of us could sleep well otherwise.

Currently listening to: "One More Night" by Maroon 5