It has been a long time since I’ve updated this blog, mostly due to frustration.

It took way too long, but I am finally finished. During most of last summer and early fall,  I was growing very frustrated with my co-directors. I was practically begging for a date to defend my dissertation, but they seemed to be dragging their feet for some reason. Then, in late October, they suddenly decided it was time for me to finish. (I think a faculty meeting had something to do with it — I suspect the provost lit a fire under them because I had been in the program ten years.)

So the fall became a mad scramble to align schedules to arrange a pre-defense and then a defense. Sadly, one of my committee members (Dr. Andrew Sage) had passed away in the fall. This made my scheduling easier as I only had to juggle the schedules of three remaining committee members plus the Dean. But one of my other committee members was out of the country for almost three weeks, so that didn’t help.

In the end, I could not arrange to do my defense before the deadline for a fall 2014 finish, but I was able to arrange it for the last day before the University closed for the year.

On December 18, 2014, I successfully defended my dissertation, Method and Models to Enable Automated Optimal Service Composition. Both my children were able to attend because their schools had let out for the winter, and my wife and her mother were also there as well as several friends and colleagues.

It’s good to finally be done. To finally, after 10 long years, to be “Dr. McDowall.”

So, now what? Well, there is still much to be done in my day job. But what about this site? I certainly don’t need to keep a dissertation journal any more. So I think I will follow in the footsteps of many others in this Internet age and convert it into a personal blog. Who knows, maybe some day it will lead to a paid writing gig.