How to save Jonathan Haupt's life

My friend Stan sent me the following email about his friend's brother-in-law to be:

My friend and colleague Brian has asked me to get the word out regarding bone marrow drives in the Boston area this weekend. All you need to do is "get swabbed and save a life." If you do not live in the area but know someone who does, please let them know about this. There are drives also in NYC and other areas. Please see teamhaupt.org for more details.

From Brian:

My future brother-in-law, Jonathan Haupt, was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer, in March, 2009. He is in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant to save his life and there are currently NO matches on the worldwide registry. We are hosting three bone marrow drives in the Boston area that I encourage you to attend and to bring your friends and family to:

Worcester, MA:
Sunday, July 12 from 11AM to 3PM
Worcester JCC; 633 Salisbury St.; Worcester, MA 01609

Natick, MA:
Saturday, July 18 from 11AM to 3PM
Belkin Lookout Farm; 89 Pleasant St. South; South Natick, MA 01760

Boston, MA:
Sunday, July 19th from 10am to 4pm
Holiday Inn Brookline; 1200 Beacon St.; Brookline, MA 02446

The chances of finding a match for Jonathan are 1 in 30,000, so I urge you to please send this email along with the attached flyer to everyone you know and ask them to send it to everyone they know (colleagues, friends, and family) to encourage them to register as a bone marrow donor! We have drives going on in Boston, NYC, Northern VA, Baltimore, Albany, Worcester, and St. Louis (if you would like more details and flyers to send to your friends and family please let me know). Also, for those unable to attend a local drive, they can order a kit online free of charge at: http://www.dkmsamericas.org/marrow-donor-form.

Jonathan is of European Jewish descent and his best chance of a match is with someone of similar heritage, but we ask anyone and everyone to come out and register. The greater the turn-out at the drives, the better chance we have at finding Jonathan a perfect match or helping someone else like him.

There is absolutely no need to be a hospital inpatient for a donation. There are 2 methods hospitals use. 70% of the time donors are asked to do the method requiring 5 days of protean shots (1 at a clinic, and 4 done by a nurse sent to your home or place of work) and then a blood donation. This method may cause joint aches for 1 to 7 days similar to those felt with the flu. The other method, used 30% of the time (usually to save a child) requires a local anesthetic in your posterior and a hollow needle to extract bone marrow from the hip. This method is known to cause posterior pains similar to falling hard on ice.

To find out more about Jonathan and his battle with leukemia, please visit our website www.teamhaupt.org. If you are on Facebook, please join the group Team Haupt to see updates on the drives throughout the country, spread the word about the drives, and to leave your well-wishes to Jonathan.

With my sincere and deepest gratitude,

Brian J. Hoffman

Powers of social media, I call upon you. The world is a very, very small place. Being halfway around the world happens these days in only a matter of hours. Information travels faster. Social media sites like Facebook allow us to fully explore our "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon."

How to save a life? Take action. What if you were the one who was able to save this life? Would you knowingly walk away? If you knew this person, would you still be ambivalent? What if it were you who needed the transplant?

Hello World!

Hello World!

Oh my, it really has been forever since I've had a chance to blog. Well over a month! As you already know, when my blog goes quiet, I am in frantic work mode.

On the research front, my robot arm has just been so temperamental. I had a meeting with my occupational therapist to make sure that the robot was doing when they expected. The meeting overall was very successful. Still, I walked away with a seemingly small list of to-dos. One of my action items required creating one additional module, which really was 3 separate things (on top of the >18 other things already going). In the process, I managed to make my robot RAM INTO THE BOOKSHELF REPEATEDLY. I scrapped those changes! Then trying a different way, my robot started doing this hypnotic circling thing and a stutter thing as well. In any case, that's mostly resolved. I still have a few things left, but there will always be room for improvement.

On the social side of the world, Mark and I have been hosting a bed and breakfast, I swear! Our friends K & K came to visit us from the mid- and west-coasts at the beginning of June. After a delicious dinner at Rendezvous in Central Square (in the people's republic of Cambridge, MA), we had second dessert at Tosci's (where another one of my friend's used to work). I had a mini-sundae and I have to say that the hot fudge topping was the best part. I love how the mini-sundae is just the right size for me (just a tasting).

Coming back from Boston, we needed to find a 24-hour Super Evilmart (Walmart) to get a blow-up mattress (ours is in DC currently). The nearest Super Evilmart is in Salem, NH which was well over 1.5 hours from where we were. We got to there at 12:01 am only to find out that Super Evilmarts are now open only 18 hours (6am - 12 midnight). Well, ok, so I had a lot of water to drink with dinner, so I really needed to use the little girl's room. I used my powers of cute Asian-ness to lure them to open the doors (that and the universal pee-pee dance). While inside, Mark calls my cell and says, "You're in! You had to get the mattress now!" So I run through Evilmart to Sporting Goods (which is in the furthest point from the store from where I am) in my 3-inch high heels. Hey, I'd just come back from a fancy dinner in Boston! I grabbed an air mattress and pump and scooted in line. I wasn't even the last person out. Meanwhile, Mark, K, & K are waiting for me in the parking lot which had a lot of very angry people in it!

The next day, we saw Up! in 3D. I totally recommend 3D for this movie; the next weekend we saw it with Mark's parents (who came up to visit) in 2D and it wasn't quite as nice. In the evening, K and I had an awesome Asian cook-fest. She made us jap-chae (Korean style lo-mein kinda with thin rice noodles) and spring rolls. I made banana wontons (bananas cooked in rum and sugar) topped with honey and sesame seeds. Yum! I totally hoarded the left-overs. :)

The following weekend, Mark's parents came up to visit us from FL. It was fun because Mark and I got to be tourists in Boston. I figure this is probably our last summer together here in Lowell, so we might as well take in all the sights. We did the Museum of Science (I still love it there), the Duck Tours, and Blueman at the Charles Playhouse. We also hung around the house and caught up.

On the gardening front, the UML Community Garden has really taken off. We have a 40 foot x 70 foot gardening space that we've tilled and planted. About half of the garden is for communal plants, which means that all members will get an equal share. The popular plants such as tomatoes, cucumber, yellow squash, zucchini, peas, and herbs were planted in the front half of the garden. So far we've had 2 work days. On the first day, we laid out the garden and planted the communal plants. On our second day, we installed the trellis supports and mesh trellises. I finally just planted my seedlings this past Saturday. I know it's really late! You can imagine just how busy I've been. Today I planted my cherry tomato plant (remember the one I started in the Aerogarden in January?) in a self-watering hanging basket and hung it outside my window. I got 5 little tomatoes from it today. I was very excited and made them into my dinner. :)

On the crafting front, I had a blitz last Thursday and Friday. My friend D is having a baby boy. She and her husband J are decorating in the Super Mario Brothers theme. So I decided to knit them a Goomba hat. And then I realized that I didn't have enough dark brown yarn. So I frogged that and learned how to 1) purl and 2) interchange colors. I solved the brown issue by making a blue background. I found a website that converts images into patterns, but they didn't let me say how big the piece was supposed to be. I'd intended to make a folded rectangle hat, but then the Goomba just got too big. Then I decided it was going to be a pillow. I've just realized that I didn't take ANY pictures of it. SIGH, that makes me really sad because I was really proud of it. I used 5 colors!!! That was a lot of thread management (ahahahah; sorry that was a CS joke). I have D the present at her shower on Saturday and she loved it :)

My honey was wonderful this past weekend and switched desks with me. Now I have a large horizontal surface on which to craft. And by craft I mostly mean sew. I'm dying to make some skirts and dresses! I'm in the process of repurposing t-shirts. I'm working on an XL men's t-shirt (from my first Defcon) and turning it into a Trinity inspired (I think anyways) ladies shirt. I promise; this time I'll take pictures.

Ok, that's it for now. I will try to post to my blog more. For more of my daily stuff, follow me on Twitter (katemtsui).

My netbook has arrived; the garden is thriving; and I have a new hair cut!

Here's my new baby; yes, I will name it. Came with Ubuntu, but I can't wait to Hackintosh it. The quarter in the picture is for scale.

In other news, my plants are growing out of control. I moved my cherry tomato and strawberry plants to soil (shown in sequence for those who aren't gardeners). The strawberry plant shown was started in the Aerogarden. The strawberry plant from the Eggling is much, much smaller.

"I'm growing big!"

And started lettuce in my Aerogarden a few weeks ago. It really is a weed, but a tasty one. This will likely be the first edible thing that comes from my apartment gardening.

I also have started Thai basil and mint in the Aerogarden. The mint had an unfortunate accident and let's just say that I've restarted it.

And lastly, check out my new hair cut!

Psst! I'm still alive

Hello World! Sorry to have disappeared. I wanted to pop up an assure you that I really am alive.
The end of February, all of March, and all of April have just been absolutely crazy!

Briefly, towards the end of February, I was pushing to submit a paper to the IROS conference. It required many long days and nights, but finally I had the whole system working from the beginning to end. Notice I didn't say working well...

Which brings us to April where I have been frantically trying to finish up the zillion little things to make it work well. I'm still working on it... kinda. Actually at the moment, I'm up to my ears in final projects for my 2 classes. I can't wait for classes to be officially done! SIGH. One more semester of classes. Also in April, magically somehow, I made time to switch a good number of our incandescent light bulbs to dimmable CFLs, installed more X10 appliance modules for the non-dimmable X10 units, switched to rechargable batteries, and painted my bathroom.

"What about March?" you ask. Excellent question. March was a horror of a month. Well, just part of it. I was in California twice and it was BEAUTIFUL!!!! But on both return flights, I caught some strain of the flu. The first laid me up in bed for 5 days straight. The second was 10 days before I was able to walk up a flight of stairs without being dizzy or terribly winded.

In the mean time, here's a flurry of pictures to show you what I've been up to!

I made vegan vanilla cupcakes for Kristen's birthday. Recipe from http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=327817

• 1/2 cup vanilla soy yogurt (I used soy pudding because that's what I had on hand; worked out fine)
• 2/3 cup fat free vanilla or plain soy milk
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3 tbl canola oil
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tbl cornstarch
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

The result:

Holly got me a cupcake at HRI. Can you guess which one's mine? (Yes, pink sprinkles! Very good.)

I flew to San Diego via Salt Lake City. This is Salt Lake City. Looks pretty nice; I'll have to find a way to get back there someday.

In March after the AAAI Spring Symposium Series, I met a wooden Keepon replica, had a chocolate lava cake (best I've ever had! Oh and cheese-y polenta!!), saw a robot plug itself into the wall to charge, and had Sprinkles cupcakes.

Last night coming home from class, I saw this beautiful night time scene.

Oh! And I've finished all 42 patches for the baby blanket! (Travel's great for getting projects done.) Now I just need to put them together and put edging on it.

Today was bright, beautiful, sunny, and 88 degrees! Maybe it's my turn for a summer of dresses!

I'm an Apartment Therapy's Small "Cool 2009" contest entrant

Check it out! Mark and I's personal home movie theater apartment is now officially an entry in Apartment Therapy's 2009 Small Cool contest.

Vote for us! http://tinyurl.com/katemtsui-small-cool-vote

Lain-inspired haircut

It's conference season again. So in preparation, I went to have my hair cut. I love it! It's a very Lain-inspired asymetrical precision cut. (Lain, as in the Serial Experiments).

These are photos of Lain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain, http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc311/jjpeebody/SerialExperimentsLain.jpg, and http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_iqENn2cxjc4/SF1pbaB9NiI/AAAAAAAAArI/xby6TOX0UTs/s400/SERIAL%2BEXPERIMENT%2BLAIN.jpg):

Here's my cut! My right hand side is longer than my left hand side. It's been highly texturized so it moves. I want to shake my head like Loreal commercial.

What does your high school year book say about you?

Earlier I talked about my fear of not being able to escape the fate of being a "townie" in my Jack and Diane post. The other day while brushing my teeth, I was thinking about my high school year book, which is much like a snapshot of Facebook. We all had pictures and profiles. We had groups with which we associated.

So what does your high school year book say about you? Was it an accurate indicator of who would be come? How well does it still represent you?

I was an honors student and bandgeek. In my senior year, I was principle flautist, vice-president of Band Council, vice-president of the National Honor Society. I was on the varsity gymnastics team. I was involved with Show Choir, jazz band, flute choir, chorus, and foobar. In the year book, I was a superlative "most musical" (instrumental).

When I went to college, I basically stopped playing flute and singing. In fact, In my undergraduate career, I wasn't very involved at all. I was focused on classes and my career (internship). In this respect, my high school year book wasn't a very good indicator at all.

In my yearbook biography, I wanted to write something classic, timeless, and epic. I succeeded to do none of this. I wrote something to the effect of "shoot for the moon and even if you miss you'll land among the stars. So for now, I'll go with God."

The entry makes me giggle a bit. I remember having quite a battle when going through my Catholic confirmation during sophomore year. I didn't regularly go to church. I didn't fully believe. I had many conflicting issues about what the Bible said and things in the world. The creation. The stances of birth control and abortion. The views on homosexuality.

For a while, I explored Protestantism, but I didn't find the answers I was looking for there either. Somehow, I convinced myself that the confirmation was the correct thing for me to do. (Really, I think I went through it because I got to take on two male names, Michael Jude.) I am an agnostic and have been since I entered college. I'm currently investigating Buddhism. My profile wasn't a very good indicator of my religion either.

"Shoot for the moon and even if you miss you'll land among the stars." I look on this phrase as the cliche that it is. It makes me laugh to think how locally I thought then. I remember in high school that graduating with your bachelors was a big deal. A masters, wow! I'm now a doctoral candidate with aspirations of becoming a professor. The cliche is backwards. You shouldn't want to aim locally at the moon. You should be aiming for the stars.

No, I don't think that my high school year book is representative of me. I've change quite a lot since 2000. I escaped becoming a townie, but I don't know where I'll land in the end. I am glad that I don't have to look back on my high school year book and think that those were the best years of my life.

HOW do I stay focused on WHY I'm doing it all, and not get caught up in all the wires 'n code

This blog post is a response to my friend Stan's twitter to me one day. Stan asked me how do I stay focused on why I'm doing it all without getting caught up in all the wires 'n code.

Really it comes down to a single word. Passion.

There was a point in my life where I worked in Corporate America. I really liked my teammates. And for a time, I liked my work. It was related to my studies. But after a few years, I knew that my heart wasn't in it like I thought it should've been.

I made the decision to go back to school full time. But what to do? I knew that I really liked working with robots. It was very satisfying to see the robot "do stuff" using my code. Fun as it was, I didn't really see Lego robot as my future.

I knew that I wanted to change the world and make it a better place. It wasn't enough for me to just make a good living (read: money). I knew that I wanted my work to make a difference, to change a life, to change the world.

When I reconnected with my advisor, we talked about the different projects. Her thesis had been an intelligent wheelchair robot. In the years when I first knew her, she was working in the field of search and rescue robots. But! She'd just received a grant in the area of assistive technology. Of all of her projects, this one sounded the most interesting to me. I would work on a robot which would help people with disabilities in their everyday life.

I've worked on the project for 3 years now and the project is drawing to a close. There have been many, many highs and many, many more lows. It took me a year to full understand the robot arm. At the end of the first year, I finally was able to interact with the rehabilitation center. Working with the patients and clinicians that first summer, I knew that I'd found my niche.

I found a special connection with P----, a woman in her 50s who had lived at the rehab center for a few years due to a traumatic brain injury. She was my inspiration and motivated me to really push through the first evaluation of the robot at the rehab center. She enjoyed working with the robot because she enjoyed the social interaction surrounding it.

Another young woman C------ has been an inspiration as well. She wants to be a dancer. She's participated in all of my evaluations. But more importantly, she talks to me about her life. I really feel like I've connected with P----- and C------. I may not be directly improving their lives, my work will make an impact and hopefully improve the life of someone else.

I've done another evaluation of the robot and I have another evaluation coming up in a few weeks. I've been working on an integration for the last six months. It's been a very, very long six months with lots of technical issues. But what gets me through is the thought of the enjoyment of people like P------ and C------- when using the robot.

I'll give you another example. I had a simple exercise for a class I'm taking. I needed to come up with a list of three collaborative pieces of software. Later in the semester, I'll need to do a 20 minute presentation on the software.

I could've taken the easy way out and listed software that I've used before. No, I wanted to make it relevant to my work as an assistive technologist. I looked for a piece of collaborative software used by people with disabilities to accomplish as task. Alas, I didn't find any and so I began to wonder "why doesn't this exist?"

Passion keeps me focused on the good of mankind.

It's not that I don't get caught up in all the wires 'n code. I do. Sometimes I can't even see my way out. But I know that somehow and some way, it'll all come together.

I also need to mention Mark. He's the one who really keeps me going, even when I don't want to. He pushes me the extra mile and he keeps me focused. Mark really is my better half.

Amish friendship bread fun

Last Wednesday after Kristen and I went to Spin class, we baked our Amish breads. Kristen chose a sourdough variation, which she had left rising since that morning. I decided to make a lemon poppy seed quick bread.

I have to say that I've really enjoyed making this Amish friendship bread. It's pretty low maintenance; just squish it every day, feed in on Day 6, and bake on Day 10. There's lots and lots of variations. I recommend checking out Armchair World's variations. Well, we did have a sink-full-and-then-some of dishes, but they cleaned up pretty quickly...

The lemon poppy seed was a snap to make. To my starter, I added 1.5 cups of flour, soy milk, and light brown sugar each. Then I pulled out 3 cups of this mixture and poured it into 3 separate bags (1 cup per bag). I now have one bag as the starter which I've been squishing; it's now Day 5 for me and I'll feed it tomorrow.

The other two I put in my freezer. I've offered one to my sister Kim. But really my intention is to keep freezing the starters. Apparently, you can use the frozen bags of starter to have bread whenever you want. That is, remove the frozen bag, thaw (approximately 3 hours), and pretend it's Day 10, when you mix and bake. This is perfect for when I want to make pancakes, or waffles, or biscuits!

So after I pulled out my 3 cups of starter, I largely followed the instructions that were passed to me. I added 3 eggs, 1 cup oil (well, actually 1/2 and then 1/2 cup of applesauce to reduce the fat content), 1/2 cup (soy) milk, 1/2 cup (light brown) sugar, 1.5 tsps baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 cups flour, and 2 small boxes of instant pudding (I used one regular lemon which was 3.4 oz, and then one sugar-free lemon which was 1 oz). I didn't add the 1/2 tsp vanilla extract or the 2 tsps cinnamon, which would be used in the traditional Amish friendship bread. And you'd use vanilla pudding instead of lemon. I did add 1/4 cup poppy seeds since my goal was to make lemon poppy seed bread.

I didn't have loaf pans, so I used the Pyrex that I did have. I pour 1/3 of the mixture into an oiled and floured loaf pan, and the rest into a lasagna pan. The loaf pan contained batter roughly 2 inches thick, which took 50 minutes to bake at 350 degrees F. The lasagna pan was much thinner, roughly 1.25 inches thick, and took only 30 minutes to bake.

I have to say that I think I like the thinner ones better. It feels more like a breakfast cake to me.

Kristen's sourdough breads baked for 25 minutes (I think) and they seemed pretty done to us. The tops had turned a nice golden brown. We discovered that the center of the breads were still pretty moist. She later discovered that the way to tell if a bread is done is to tap the top with a utensil; if it sounds hollow, the bread is done and if the tap sounds like a dull thud, it is still moist inside.

We'd baked hers first and sampled it first as well. Oh my! It was so good. Not exactly a traditional sourdough. It had this beautiful sweetness to it, which we both enjoyed. Our friends at the lab later in the week also enjoyed the sweetness of this bread :)

My lemon poppy seed bread turned out well too. Not as lemon-y as I would've liked. Next time I'll remember to add the zest of a lemon. I could also use lemon extract (instead of vanilla) if I can find other recipes that use lemon extract. It seems silly to have it for this one variation.

I have some bananas that are nearly overripe and I'm seriously thinking about making banana nut bread this week. I also have a ton of apples left over from the Botball workshop which would be just wonderful. Can you imagine biting into a nice piece of apple Cinnamon bread with chunks of baked apples? Yum!

Happy Birthday, Alex Rayburn!

Mark's sister Natalie gave birth to her son Alex early this morning. Happy birthday, Alex! He's 8 lbs 4 oz, which means that Natalie and Rhett can use the BumGenius cloth diapers that Mark and I gave them for Christmas.

Progress on Alex's Patches blanket is going along well. I've decided to make an 8x8 patch blanket. I got tired of knitting just a single color patch, so I wrote out the pattern: dark brown, light blue, navy blue, light brown, blue. As I finish each new square, I'm whip stitching it to the existing squares. I have the first color block done (it's actually photographed backwards!). Instead of Super Bowl, this was my Sunday as I was trying to thinking through a programming problem I'd been having since Saturday night.

Earlier in the week I finished up the booties for William (Vicki's son). I made the second pom-pom (so fun!) and now they're ready to be mailed off. I love the two colors. Hopefully I'll have enough of the blue skein left to make 11 more blue patches for Alex's baby blanket!

Speaking of babies, I don't have any, but my plants are my babies, so I'll talk about them. My strong tomato plant is growing big. There's a quarter in the picture for scale. The second tomato plant that I "saved" isn't growing very much, but it has some new leaves. Sorry it's so hard to see, but I wanted to leave them alone in the incubator. The new strawberry plants germinated in the Aerogarden have caught up to the size of the ones in the Eggling!

Today I discovered that you can make instant pudding with soy milk. The trick is to 1) use cold soy milk, and 2) use half the amount (to start) specified on the package.

Tomorrow, I'll be baking my Amish friendship bread. I used soy milk and light brown sugar to feed on Day 6 and the yeast is just fine. I have to let out the CO2 generated a couple times per day. I'm very excited to make a lemon poppy seed bread. I don't think it'll last long!