Just a short post tonight.  Today, my friend Kshipra, who I've know for 9 years now both at Duke and Stanford, passed her PhD defense.  It was good to see her pass and I'm excited for what the future holds for her.  Since we started grad school at the same time, there's a part of me that thinks I should be finishing soon too.  Logically I know that systems PhDs take longer than theory ones (like Kshipra's), but still, the competitive side of me likes to think of things as races.  Turning off that competitive side of me is harder than I would like to admit.