I responded today to the status report request from the DePaul PhD Committee. It seems like I have been working on this forever. It was a bit consuming. My wife was getting a little upset. She would say, "Aren`t you finished with those early morning yet." Well I sent it today. I sent an email to my adviser to see if he would send a report about me. He said that he would send it on May 2nd. I think he will. I am not sure what he will write about me. I am not sure it matters. I have all the data that shows my progress. I guess he could say that I did not keep him informed. Conversation is a 2 way street. I am sure that he knows about most things. I am not sure he knows about my social networking. That`s ok. He does not really need to know that stuff. I will post my status report as soon as I remove peoples names etc so that everyone remains anonymous. I think that it is better that way.

I plan on working on the html for the answers to the 2007 exam questions next. It is summer, I am slowing a bit. I started running with the guys at work again. It will be 2 weeks on Friday since I started. Running and swimming, two a day work outs 3 times a week. These first couple of weeks I am a bit run down. It will pick up here in the middle of the month. These guys go 6 miles at lunch. I am doing good just to stay up with one of them near the end ever day. I think that I will catch up to his fitness level here soon. It remains to be seen whether I can do that or not.

I think that my blogs will become more infrequent for a while. I need to see how this will play out. I will keep you all posted as to my progress as things prevail.

I have started looking at "R" again. I spend less and less time on the 2007 html. I am going to get the "R" installation on my laptop up to date and start looking at source code. I know that I need to explain to you guys what I am doing with this but you have to just know that it is pertinent to the PhD.

I polished up my time-line this morning. It looks pretty good but pretty long. As I look back over it I am overwhelmed by the amount of work that I had to do to get to today. It does not feel like a lot of work but this time-line shows my daily persistence in the program. The amount of paralyzing worry that I worked through and the documents I have written over days and days of revisions are enormous. The lengthy emails and management of the situation with getting back to people and providing what was needed. It was like a full time software project. I have managed larger software projects with many more involved individuals that were less work. The amount of time that I had for other things in my life suffered. But, I know that It will be all worth it in the end. I post the time line at the end of this blog entry.

I am now working on the meat of the document. I have been making little notes to myself and organizing this text for a few days. Now organizing the little notes will be the task. Getting them all on one piece of paper and then ordering that same piece of paper over a couple of other pieces of paper. Then making a PDF and sending the document. I have one week until the document is due. I think that I can handle one more week of 4am mornings. By now it is old hat. I am productive at that time. The lack of sleep thing seems to be counteracted by the fact that I am waking for the day not extending the day beyond some already worked number of hours. All the best brain cells get used first in the morning when I am fresh.

The Time Line of the Last Year

Date	Description
02/09/2005	Ask for past exams examples to discovery anything new?
02/16/2005	Ask the graduate advisement office to view my past exam failure, told to contact my adviser
02/17/2005	A refusal by my adviser to help with an exam question because it was not in his area of expertise.
03/10/2005	Notified my exam application was received
04/08/2005	Day of 2005 Software Engineering Exam
06/08/2005	Notified that my exam results have been mailed to me
08/15/2005	Notified my adviser that my deadline for appeal was August 31st
08/17/2005	Told to send my appeal to the PhD committee...but I don`t know who that is?
08/17/2005	Request my adviser to send my appeal.
08/17/2005	Notified that my appeal of the exam will be handled after the fall quarter begins.
08/24/2005	Received contact information for PluS program (Director)
11/03/2005	First of multiple Visits to Doctor for Assessment
04/14/2006	Request report from doctor to be mailed to PluS, Advisement Office, Adviser
05/02/2006	Contacted PluS program about my doctor results of learning disability
05/05/2006	Doctor reply about delay in sending report because of office move.
05/26/2006	Release Form request from doctor
08/04/2006	Requested alternate way for reviewing the exams and was denied
08/28/2006	Notified by my adviser that he will be away from school during the summer and unable to work with me.
09/09/2006	First BLOG entry of DePaul Experience on http://endofdayexperience.blogspot.com/
09/12/2006	Finally, able meeting with director of PLuS program to create a plan
10/09/2006	Advisers refusal to work with me until there is a PluS program recommendation.
10/09/2006	PluS program suggests my adviser and I meet. Adviser refuses without a PluS program recommendation.
10/10/2006	Begin Daily Study Regimen starting at 3-4am for 3-4 hours before work
10/10/2006	Request to meet with my adviser on reviewing exam copied PluS program
10/10/2006	PluS program asks for the adviser to push forward on with a limited recommendation of test review.
10/12/2006	No response from adviser copied contact PluS program
10/17/2006	No response from adviser copied contact PluS program
10/19/2006	PluS program contacts adviser directly.
10/19/2006	Reminded my adviser of our meeting and that my intent was to go over BOTH exams
10/20/2006	Attended first meeting on teaching ISP121, first announced my interest.
10/21/2006	Visited adviser to review both exams. Told first exam was too old to review.
10/24/2006	Email thanking my adviser for reviewing my single exam with me.
10/24/2006	Contacted advisement office about exam being too old
10/24/2006	Academic Advisements responds that they DO have my first test.
10/25/2006	Adviser states that he believes we are finished reviewing exams and that there would be no more review.
10/25/2006	Notified my interest in teach ISP 121 was accepted/ask for Thursday night session
10/26/2006	Offered to pass on the review of the first test as an olive branch.
10/30/2006	Phone meeting with PluS program director
11/07/2006	Notify PluS program director of exam dates.
11/09/2006	Notified of my lab classroom assignment
11/14/2006	Ask PluS program to get ZED question thrown out on the basis that it has never been taught in any depth in any class at DePaul
11/30/2006	Attended Orientation for Teach ISP121 I do a sample lecture but not the right audience
12/13/2006	Sent Resume to office of employment
12/15/2006	Notified that I would be used for spring quarter rather than winder quarter ISP 121
01/03/2007	Told I was select to teach ISP121
01/15/2007	First contact with Study Group/Start of weekly meetings
01/21/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
01/24/2007	Told to contact employment office to do another sample lecture.
01/28/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/02/2007	Made contact with Computational Finance Professor before giving Sample ISP 121 Lecture.
02/02/2007	Second sample lecture with correct audience but I was then not selected
02/04/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/11/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/18/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/22/2007	Told I am scheduled for section 902 of ISP 121
02/25/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
02/26/2007	Told my section of ISP121 was can celled
03/03/2007	Emailed my exam application for my 3rd attempt at the exam.
03/04/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
03/06/2007	Notified advisement that of special requests for the exam in the absence of the PluS program director on my behalf.
03/06/2007	Told of new PLuS contact for working on my behalf
03/06/2007	Notified that the PluS program director would be `Out of the office for a while`
03/07/2007	Made contact with new PluS program contact
03/11/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
03/13/2007	New PluS program contact makes special requests for accommodation on exam
03/18/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
03/25/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
04/01/2007	Study Group for 4 hours
04/09/2007	Announce http://thestudent.fateback.com and http://endofdayexperience.blogspot.com to The World/Office of Advisement/PLuS/My Adviser
04/13/2007	Third Exam 2007 for Software Engineering

I have been working on the report for a few days now. I have organized my thoughts around my research and what I will be doing going forward. For the history I have prepared a timeline of what incidents have happend since the 2005 test. The appeal, the doctor, the review of tests, study and study group are all part of the timeline. I am working to tell a story about the last year. I will publish my timeline here upon sending my report before the 5th. This has been sort of a big undertaking. I find it very important to tell my story acuratly and without biased, just the facts. So the timeline dates and my experiences are taken direclty from my emails and logs. Often times I used the exact words used in the emails. I am nearly finished. What is left to do is write the meat of the paper. Since this is possibly my last celebration if I don`t have a favorable outcome to the test I want to say it perfectly. I have spent 8 months or more on the chosen research topic before the distraction of failing the second exam and subsuquent giration to stay in school. Nothing has changed about the research. My feelings about the department and how best to complete the degree have been in flux. I still believe I have a great topic. I still believe that I have a great plan. I just need to continue. The lack of interest in my topic and plan by others should be no reflection on my intentions. Until I am able to produce the vocabulary in the right context to describe my research others will be confused and bewildered. That is just how it is going to be. Understanding is what the PhD is all about. If they don`t understand it is not nescesarrily that you are wrong you may just not be complete yet. Being complete is a function of bandwidth and execution. If you are set on paths that are less than fruitful because of requirments you should not be held accountable for a delay. I am a part time student. I can only work on this so many hours. Since September I have done something every single day for at least 2-4 hours. I work out for 1-2 more and attend work for 9 more hours. At a minimum that leaves only 8 hours for sleeping and eating. So you know I am getting less than that for sleeping. I don`t know how I can do better than that. I do have a family. Generally, in my research at my work I work more than 8 hours and 1 hour of travel so I really am quite a juggler. I don`t really have time for much in the way of academic publications. As I have said before, these activities are a must with my learning disability. I have to study longer and work out harder to maintain a level of excellence. So it is a matter of execution and bandwith.

I got back more information about the other guys in the study group. One guy left after 20 minutes. I really comes down to the information ask for what not on the reading list or it was ask in such a way as to not use the correct vocabulary to clue you into what is being ask. I have other independent corroborations to these ideas from others that have taken this past exam. It was not representative of any of the other exams nor was it designed to test the knowledge of the students. Don`t tell the students to study one thing and them ask them about another.

So I have started thinking about this report I am going to write to the PhD subcommittee on my progress. I think that this should be my highest priority. Putting up the questions from the exam, I am not sure what that proves. It does prove that I can remember them. I am not sure that it proves that they prove what the testers want them to prove. I remember them, I looked them up, I know something about them even before, now I started turning them into web pages. Does it prove that I am any more of a PhD, No. Obscure references defined, misdirected study refocused, but, what did they test of me? Even some of these definitions like "What is architecture?" does it really prove anything about what the person taking the test is all about. A nebulous questions defined, void of all context, relates to nothing. It is like saying "Tell me what you know, but be specific." The word "specific" does not clue you into a granularity or a topic. The testers indirectly ask a macroeconomic question when what they really wanted to know was about a guys taxes. Both would be specific questions. I thrash every time I think about it. At least the long questions at the end of the test were specific skills.

The last year has been all about this test. I am not sure my adviser knows me well enough to be able to write anything about me anyway. I have not been happy with the DePaul relationship. I am optimistic that it will get better. I really think that this school has potential. The PhD program from 2001- 2007 has not grown in maturity much. I see the same lax ability to service the students. Some really care, some don`t. Some just want to guard there existence and limit there workload. Some are really good. Some work hard to get people enthusiastic about programs. I am excited about the Computational Finance masters program. It is about time for that program.

I have material for this report. I have made progress outside of the test. I expect that others have no idea. The fact that they don`t should signify something. It does not signify that I have not been active. It does signify the level of interest of others. It does signify the level of help of others. The fact that I can make progress without direction says a lot for me. The fact that I am slowed by other hoops without concern for the real work means I have real, set in stone, signposts of my progress. I just need to put these on paper. I have made contacts over the last year. They are significant. I want to learn not just complete. At this point I am not learning anything. In fact, I have been teaching something. Read "The Big Brag" by Dr. Seuss.

Let us spend some time on this report. This is a part time endeavor.

Had a great weekend. The weather was great, sunny and warm. We were baby sitters on Sunday. I had put the patio furniture out on Sunday. I sat and watched the kids from under the umbrella for a few hours and read a couple of old Linux Journals. It was very pleasant. It has not happened in a very long time. I have read nothing in my spare time but information pertaining to the PhD for the last 12 months. I was glad to finally read something I was interested in and it not be a publication off of the reading list.

I received an email this past Wednesday from a PhD in the administration that is writing a paper about educational research at DePaul University. It seemed kind of funny that this would come now at a time I am taking advantage of the PLuS programs opportunities. I did respond with my website. I don`t know if she will get much response. She is asking for past work so that she can write a summary. Is there any past work? If there is I have never heard of it. I read those things mailed to me having to do with research but none were memorable about educational research.

I also got back an email from my study partner that took the test also. He said he was very surprised at the content of the test. It seems that his surprise at the questions and the fact they were not on the reading list were right in line with what I thought. He is optimistic as am I. It is funny he would say about one question that "We probably know that one...it is just a naming convention thing." Well that naming convention thing made me upset.

Yesterday was mailed out a memo to all PhD students from a professor of the administration with a new assignment of chair of the PhD review subcommittee. DePaul is implementing a new PhD review process. It seems that the deadline for submitting an assessment is May 5th, 2007. Looks like my putting up of my questions this week will have to wait. I need to write a document. Wow, wonder what my adviser will write about me. He doesn`t have much to write because he has kept me in the dark since this process began. I have not been unable to work with him since he said that this test thing had to be completed first. I have tried to move forward taking classes and writing papers but he had limited my progress because of how the current test was handled. Granted I can understand that I am closer to being released from the program than probably any of his other students and therefore he gives me less time.

Well, I will write this thing. I will talk about the contacts I have made over the last year and what I will do next in the program. They have ask for these three things.

1) discuss any significant progress towards the completion of your dissertation proposal or defense,

2) list any significant publications or other research activity during last year,

3) and describe your plans of the upcoming year.

I can do that.

It has nearly been a week since the exam. Yesterday I got up early also. I am still having trouble adjusting back to regular time. In trying to sleep longer I forgot to put my watch on. When I got ready to go and swim I forgot to put it on also. Messed up my swim because I forgot my watch which I swim by the time. It kind of disrupted my morning. I was off. The switching back to regular time is tough. It is kind of like jet lag. It is more disruptive than the making time to study. I have decided to just go with it for a while. I cannot proceed with the PhD thing until they come back with my results. The last time it took them 8 months to return my results. They have said that it should take 4-6 weeks. We will see what it takes this time. In the mean time I wait for an email from one of my study group members. I am wanting to know if he had the same test as I did. I want to know if the questions were similar. It seems that they have gone on vacation. I got the how did you do emails but did not get email back from them about what there tests looked like? I suspect that they are waiting until they think that time enough has passed before they talk about the tests. His reply message said he would return on the 19th, that is today. Since I am getting up so early I plan on doing a deep dive on each of the questions I remember from the exam. I am going to put a new section called "2007" on my website. Those answers will be put there. They will not have the questions since I don`t think that would be proper nor do I think that I could remember them exactly word for word. I expect that I will publish them 2 weeks after the exam. So, the publishing will be next week on Friday. That should have given enough time for others to have taken the exam. The list is up to 8 points now. 5 of the 8 I know are not on the reading list. I will publish which are and are not on the reading list. Preparing of the web page will probably take longer than to just write an answer. I want to have more information about each question. I want to have the quotes of where the information is and the history of it. For instance I know that A*P came about some time after 1999. We were talking about it at work and how that it might help our projects. One of the other things that we talked about was "Spring". I can find a start date of about 2002 for that one. Anyway I think that A****j, a programming language, was released in 2001. The "Software Architecture in Practice" book has a copyright of 2003. That kind of explains how there can be a reference in the index but when you go to that section there is not text describing such a reference. That is the newest book that I have. The others on the reading list are earlier. This book mentioned is on the reading list in an earlier version so that version could not have possibly had a reference to A*P. The book version on the reading list has a copyright of 1997. The first papers on the A*P subject are in 1997. The first books on the A*P subject don`t start showing up until 2004. So this one is definitely not on the latest reading list from November of 2002 with the latest book on that list being from Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained" from 2000. This is just the beginning of my deep dive into each question. Since I have time on my hands and an inability to sleep at the proper times I am going to put these on my website.

On the day that I publish my results of my deep dive I will stop using the asterisks to hide the names of the subjects of questions. I am doing this so that I don`t give any information to the people reading my website that may have not taken the exam. The other answers I have posted they have access to if they are taking the exam because the information is freely available to students taking the exam. So since the current test information does not show on any previous practice tests and does not show in any previous clues to those topics I will not provide them for at least 2 weeks following the test.

I once joked with my adviser that they would run out of test questions if I kept taking the exams. Maybe they have and that is why we get new questions. I expected to have the deadlock questions and the "City of Plaistow" question at least. They were on the past exams many times. Spring is a great time for new beginnings and the learning of new information. This is not a matter of understanding. This is not a matter of knowing a certain area of knowledge after being told that you will be tested of that area and you need to be able to exhibit a certain depth. This is a matter of exposure. I have heard professors in reference to the test say, "That is not my area of expertise." Well, these questions may have not been in mine either. If they were in my line of exposure would I have the depth to be able to say that I am an expert in them. I find these kind of new questions reprehensible. They are worse than the archeology type questions. At least the archeology type questions were ones I would have known about and been prepared to explain deeply. Given the work that I go through to prepare to explain something deeply I am really quite angry. This is not a memorization kind of thing this the Socrates type thing I mentioned in a previous post. Think of it like a speech where you prepare and go to the podium and are ask to speak on a different subject at the last second. This test is not Toast Masters International. As I said before, "Don`t say you are going to give me a 14th century literature test and then give me a test with Clive Barker and Ian Fleming, I would do better with Neil Stephenson." I am upset the more I think about it. If I cannot find these questions in the reading list provided, they should not be on the exam.

One more thing about the exam: It is a contradiction to say don`t put down a memorized answer when you ask for quotes. Also, don`t say avoid opinion and conjecture if you are asking for a general answer from a student. Student answers are opinion and conjecture. Remember the movie "Back to School" when a paper was turned in by the student main character written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. about Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. as his own work. The teacher says that the student main character knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. By the way, Kurt Vonnegut passed 2 days before the test on April 11th, 2007 at the age of 84. Vonnegut played himself in a cameo appearance in that 1986 movie.

I am still trying to shift my sleep patterns back. It is still early but I could not sleep. I am starting to get a better picture of the story around the test. I have gotten email from the others that they have now finished there tests. Up to now they have not heard from me. Besides they have not seen my website nor my blog. As I said I got email from one of them yesterday evening. I think that it is probably ok to discuss parts of the test with him now that he has taken it. I want to know if he took a test that is more like the tests in the past or a test more like the one I just took that is completely different. The test that I just took had several questions that I have learned now were not on the reading list. In fact one of the questions on the test A*P comes from a different era of software engineering not covered by the books and papers on the reading list. So I have put the questions to the guy that says he has taken the exam. Even if he comes back and says that the exams were similar I still believe it was unfair because of the questions that were not on the reading list. I know of at least 4 parts that were not on the reading list. These were either whole questions are parts of questions. One question that was on the reading list was combined with another to make it longer than it was in the past. Another that was on the reading list was more complex. The test was very different from the point of view of complete-ability, complexity, and material. The material is the one that makes me most upset. I can understand how shooting sprees like the one in the news now gets started. I don`t condone that king of thing but I understand how some nut being treated unfairly does something awful like that.

I have now looked up all the material that I remember from the test that seemed out of place. I now definitely know that they were not on the reading list. I will know sometime today if these questions were just for me or not. I don`t know what good this does for me but DePaul Reputational Risk was never a concern. I have only wanted to make the program better. I have been completely honest. To spring something like this on me was not honest. Integrity, integrity, integrity, lets have some integrity. If I had had a book on the reading list with this information, I would have read it. Even if I did know something about each and every one of these before the exam I would not have prepared in-depth for them because I did not think that I would be tested over them. As I have said before people get out of the masters program, and PhD for that matter, all the time without knowing the difference between Moore Machines and Mealy Machines. Did I expect to have them covered on the exam, No. I did expect to have to draw state machines with UML. I do this in my job. I expect to do this well, it has been in a past exam. Change the reading list if you expect to ask questions about a different area of Software Engineering. I did notice how a good deal of the questions that were not on the reading list were language questions. That was a different flavor than the information on the reading list today. Most of the information on the reading list is language agnostic. The "Java Programming Language" book is only about basic constructs. Would you expect to get language questions, no. I would only expect to have minimal OO language questions. Some of these questions I mention were labeled architecture questions. Ah, another overloaded term architecture. The quote from the book, "Software Architecture encompasses the structure of large software systems. The architectural view of a system is abstract, distilling away details of implementation, algorithm, and data representation and concentrating on the behavior and interaction of "black box" elements. A software architecture is developed as the first step toward designing a system that has a collection of desired properties." So, these questions are not architecture questions even though some of them were labeled that way. They are not part of design either. They may be related to tool design but not to system design. OO analysis and design lend themselves to OO languages better than procedural languages but I would think, though it crazy, you could do OO analysis and design and end up using a procedural language. If they were architecture and design questions would they not come form the architecture and design section on the reading list. Design Patterns, SEI software architecture, RUP, Scenario architecture analysis, and a pre-RUP about RUP paper were on the reading list. It does not seem that these would cover O***/C*** P**** in OO design, and in fact they don`t. They don`t cover A*P either. The don`t cover the F****** B**** C**** problem either. I would not expect to have them on the exam.

It still remains to be seen what will happen. I don`t think anyone is visiting my site yet.