Negative

I assumed from the lack of electronic message that my coronavirus test was positive, but I called the health center this morning and it turns out they just forgot to send the results. Viral RNA was not detected. I've been provisionally cleared to return to campus, though I should call the specific provider who tested me for the final decision. The timing is good because I was starting to run out of food in the house and would have needed to pay for delivery if I were to stay isolated. But I was able to go shopping today and am now restocked.

No Facebook app ads

Earlier this week I created a Facebook ad campaign for my app and got blocked pending verification. I filled out the reactivation(?) form at the time, but I got a response a couple days ago informing me that my ad account was disabled for a terms-of-service violation, which was not specified. After looking through the terms I noticed that it might be a problem that my app's logo has the same shape as a play button, but I'm not sure that was the reason. Anyway, I will apparently not be advertising on Facebook.

First day of graduate classes

Today was the first day of instruction at UT Knoxville. I would have had two classes to attend in person, but due to possible infection I attended virtually through Zoom. The genetics/genomics course launched into an introduction to rice plants. Overall this university seems to have a much stronger emphasis on plants than UIUC and I may need to do some reading to shore up my plant biology knowledge. The first biochemistry lecture was mostly class organization. After classes I spent the afternoon doing the first genetics assignment in its entirety to have it done.

I still haven't received results from the coronavirus test yesterday. Symptoms are roughly unchanged, still just a mild sore throat with occasional headache and cough.

Self-isolating

I woke up this morning with a minor cough, headache, and possibly sore throat. I had planned to stop by campus again today, but as the self-screening tool reminded me, these are all symptoms consistent with COVID-19. After filling out the appropriate form from the screening tool, I was advised by a university response team to get tested. I went to the Student Health Center; they took a quick nasal swab (not the super invasive kind) and a throat sample (for a strep test). The strep test already came back negative, but I won't know the viral RNA detectability results for another day or so. Until then I will attend class remotely to be safe.

Graduate orientation begins

Early this morning was the start of the Graduate School's online orientation. It mostly focused on professional development opportunities and campus resources. I learned about a center for refining teaching/learning methods, which sounds very helpful since I'll be TAing in the spring. I signed up for a 1-credit online class this semester called Best Practices in Teaching Biology. Tomorrow is the graduate teaching assistant orientation, again an all-morning online event.

Undergraduate research archived

 Today I attended an online lab meeting of the research group I was in back at Illinois. My mentor presented my recent figures and new work he did in lab. To preserve my tools in case someone needs to extend some work I did, I tidied up and cataloged all the files in my "lab work" folder. I exported my electronic notebooks from Benchling, added them to the archive, zipped the whole thing up, and stored it in a lab Box folder. This concludes my work for that lab.

Relocated to Knoxville

Today I spent 13 hours in transit from the Quad Cities to Knoxville. All the stuff got unloaded pretty quickly but is currently in a big mess around the house. Tomorrow I'll start unpacking for real and take care of things like getting Internet installed.

Registration complete

The online registration system was giving me some trouble, but with the assistance of university staff I have now successfully registered for all the core first-semester courses in my graduate program. I checked the bookstore's web site but textbook information doesn't seem to be available for fall yet. I will keep an eye on that and order books as soon as possible.

Another app workaround

Today while testing the app features I added yesterday, I noticed that my bus app was completely failing to display departure information. The bus company's server is currently returning empty departure lists for all stops, and very slowly at that. I had a workaround ready to go for when that server doesn't provide departures, but the slowness in response was causing my server to give up before reaching the fallback plan. I reorganized the error handling and my app can now use a fallback for all routes' information.

Yet more app improvements

I spent today making several more improvements to my bus app before more students (?) arrive back on campus next month. I started by making it possible to switch off the display of specific information on the trip list screen in case it was too dense for people. I went to finally finish the half-done vehicle lookup feature but then noticed a serious problem: the trip information as called up from departure details was often for the wrong trip. This seems to have been caused by a recent change to code that loads data from the bus company into the database. After fixing that, I did complete the vehicle lookup feature, filling in the missing UI. Finally, I fixed the longstanding strange behavior of navigation directions displaying the bus's whole route shape. The server now tells the app which shape points are associated with stops so that the app can draw just the subsection of the trip that's relevant to the user.

Revisiting ENCODE data

Last year I wrote scripts to do a big search of the ENCODE Project data for proteins that could affect the one we're focused on. We identified one that happens to be a member of a family of proteins. My task is now to search the data for relationships between that regulatory protein family and the family to which our protein of main interest belongs.

More app tweaks

Today I addressed a handful of tiny inconveniences in my app, mostly surrounding the route trip listings. Those listings now require less jumping around when trying to learn about a route that isn't currently running. I also adjusted some of the "landmark" stops used in the new trip summary feature. Once the bus company releases the full data set in August I will probably need to add a few more landmarks to display the (numerous and arcane) school district diversions in a helpful way.

App improvements for fall

UIUC is planning to have some in-person classes in the fall, so some students will likely use the bus system. I want new students to have a good experience with my bus app, so I spent yesterday and today making some improvements. I finally fixed a longstanding issue where the app's main screen failed to identify the user's location. I then added a new feature to display a "fingerprint" of each trip in the route trip listings so the user can tell apart variations on and brief diversions from the common route.

Degree awarded

Today I received an email notifying me that my official transcript from the University of Illinois has been sent to the University of Tennessee's graduate school as I requested a couple months ago. Since the transcript was set to be released after degrees appear on transcripts for that semester, that indicates that my degree has been fully awarded.

Left Champaign

This morning I packed up the few remaining things I needed for my stay in my apartment last night and quickly vacuumed a couple spots I missed yesterday. There was no caffeine left unpacked from last night, but I had a bag of cereal to eat from for breakfast. I then drove directly back to the Quad Cities. I've vacated my apartment and will not need to return to Champaign for anything.

Staying to clean apartment

I drove back from Indiana today and planned to continue all the way home after a stop to pack up everything from my apartment. But cleaning and packing took much longer than I expected and it started to rain intensely, so I'm staying here in my apartment tonight. I also spent some time trying in vain to get into buildings to return my keys. I'll load the last of my stuff into the car and leave tomorrow morning.

End of Indiana trip

Today was my last full day vacationing(?) in Indiana. We ended the day roasting marshmallows on a small fire. Tomorrow morning I'll head back home through Champaign.

Turkey Run State Park

I spent most of today with a friend at Indiana's Turkey Run State Park. It has a network of hiking trails of varying difficulty. We did the most rugged one - involving numerous stone stairs, tricky slopes, and rock paths through creeks - then a long loop to see some landmarks. My favorite was Falls Canyon with a slippery path up to a little waterfall.

Visiting Indiana

This afternoon I arrived in Indiana with a friend. Tomorrow we'll visit the Turkey Run State Park. After a couple days I'll return to Champaign to clean out my apartment.

Last stay in Champaign

I returned to campus today for a visit and to clean out my apartment. I'll stay about a week and vacate the apartment when leaving. I also need to return my keys to various places.