The Diary of a Crabby Scientist

Done!

2010-05-19T21:42:00.000-04:00

Well, sorry. I have been away for a while. I have been finishing up with classes and such and then writing a major proposal for the last month.

Class turned out to be pretty much a disaster. If you don't remember, which I don't expect you too, I was teaching the balloon class. There were three groups that were doing the project, plus me and the GSI tried to do it too. One of the groups pretty much finished a bit behind schedule, but still while classes were officially in session. They had issues (like, it didn't really work), but nothing unusual. The other teams had all sorts of personality issues. They fought with each other and basically couldn't pull it together to get the project done. One of the teams basically threw away their design a couple of days before launch and started over (except for the computer and some other components). They each blamed other members of the team for being lazy and not showing up to meetings and such. Needless to say, their balloon didn't work very well. The other team had issues too, but it was only with a couple people on the team. Their main issue was that their computer system was VERY complicated, because they were actually using something that they are going to launch into space in a year or so. So, they took the time to figure out how to properly use the thing. It was a very impressive effort. Their system worked pretty much flawlessly. Both of these teams launched about a week after classes ended (but before the end of final exams).

The GSI and I built a system together too, since I had never done this. It was a challenge, since I was using components that I had never used before. I was also trying to work while doing this, so it was a little overwhelming. Eventually we got everything done and working and launched with one of the other teams. Everything worked flawlessly on board the system. The only problem we had was that I forgot the ground-station at work, because I was so busy trying to get things for the class team. Oops. I guess I fail my checklist.

Just after this ended, I started to work on a proposal for a CubeSat - which, for us is a 10 cm x 10 cm x 30 cm box (a shoe box, basically) that we will launch into space. It has a cool instrument on it to measure neat things in the upper atmosphere (what you might call space). I had a lot of issues with writing the proposal. I was under the assumption that I would be writing the science part and a colleague of mine, assisted by Master's students, would be writing the spacecraft part. Well, this was fatally flawed. The students, who I have been working with over the last 8 months to design the satellite, had only a real vague idea of how to write a proposal (as you might expect), and could not really answer tough questions about the satellite. I had naively believed that they had written a final report that we could just drag and drop into the proposal. How stupid I am. We basically used very little of the original document, and had to do some significant work to put the proposal together. The other bad part of the whole ordeal was that my Co-PI went on vacation a week before the proposal was due, and was extremely busy with other things the week leading up to that. So, I basically put the thing together with a bit of help from others. Not really what I was expecting. It took many, many, many more hours that I had expected. But, I guess you can say that I know a LOT more about building a satellite now (or at least proposing). All of this work is leading up to a bigger proposal to a bigger organization coming in about 8 months. We are basically proposing the same satellite, but 48 of them. With 100 times as much money.

But, that was yesterday (literally). Today we are on vacation. We have a rough start, since both CrabMama and I worked up until the last possible minute, and so had to do a lot of stuff this morning. Add to that that we have someone house sitting for us, so CrabMama felt that we had to do spring cleaning, and you get a wonderfully tense situation.

But, no more.

I am literally sitting by the pool while the kids are swimming around. Here is proof:

Major Neglect

2010-04-16T23:09:00.000-04:00

I feel like I am neglecting you blog. I am spending so much time with my photo blog, and now I have been seduced away even more by blogging using my real identity (Clark Kent). They actually added my blog on the home page of the department. How can I turn my back on that blog now, old blog? I... I think that you might want to get out a little bit more and maybe see other blogs too. Maybe you should, you know, try your luck on some other blogs and see how it goes. Don't worry, I am not, like, abandoning you. It's just, you know, I need some space. I need to have a little freedom. Hey, I have a great idea - let's be friends. You know, we can hang out, be buds and all. Maybe have some benefits (if you know what I mean). But, you know, like be able to see other blogs too. You know?

Not science, at work

2010-04-12T09:50:00.000-04:00

While I listen to a fair bit of "modern" music (i.e., it has come out in the last 10 years), I occasionally find myself descending into an 80s trend. I think that I am in one of those right now. On Saturday, when I went on a bike ride, I was listening to 1984 by Van Halen. "Hot For Teacher" has to be one of the best guitar songs ever. I just listened to 90125 by Yes. Now I am back to Van Halen. On Friday I listened to The Police all day. Don't worry, I will shake the 80s. Maybe I'll whip out a little Genesis with Peter Gabriel (i.e., dip into the 70s) before returning to this century, though....

Science, at home

2010-04-11T23:02:00.000-04:00

Today we put together our new telescope. It can do 50x, which is pretty cool. I also downloaded a sky map on my HTC Hero phone. It is one of these apps that you can tilt the phone up and move it around and it will show you what you are looking at in the sky. The app is really freaking cool.

Anyways, the app told us that Saturn was to the south east, so we tried to find it through the 50x zoom, which was quite hard. You can take the doubler off the telescope, to make it 25x, which makes it much easier to find things. I located a bright star in the field of view, then put the doubler back on. After fiddling around for a while, Crab Girl saw rings! I looked though and saw them too! Then Crab Boy whacked the thing, and I had to readjust. After that he saw Saturn's Rings too! Crab Mama saw a blurred object, but wasn't really able to see rings.

I can appreciate how people would spend a fair bit of money on a nice telescope with a very nice tripod. We have a $30 telescope and a $20 tripod. Hard to see anything in focus. But, it was UberCool!

Manning it up

2010-03-25T09:57:00.000-04:00

Today I rode my bike to work. It was the only day this week that I could actually ride, since I did the balloon launch on Tuesday, and tomorrow I get to go to my undergrad school and give them a talk on how I succeeded in life after getting a degree from there (what?) Why is biking today so unusual? Well, it is the first day of the year that I have biked while it is raining. Now, it isn't pouring. But, it is cold and rainy, which makes for a miserable ride. Today I didn't feel miserable. Today I felt like it was the only day that I could bike, and I was happy.

Just for note, it is the seventh day that I have biked in the last three weeks.

Next week, I won't be able to bike at all (well, maybe Monday I can bike a couple of miles), since I am going to be traveling. If I am up to it, I may try to find a bike store somewhere in the area and see if I can rent a bike. Or maybe I should do something like sit-ups or push-ups or jog or something. Hmmmm....

Well, we shall see.

First Balloon Launch of 2010

2010-03-23T22:07:00.000-04:00

Today we launched a balloon. And recovered it!

The day started off quite poorly. For all of our launches except one, I have driven my own vehicle for all of the flights. About a year ago, I bought a trailer so we could carry the Helium a little more safely. I have been hauling it with our minivan, which Crab Mama was really pissed about. Yesterday I reserved a van from the university. They actually have vans with trailer hitches! This morning, I went to pick up the van, and there were no seats in it! After much hashing around and such, I actually found a Durango with a trailer hitch. They let me rent that. All of this took about an hour or so, which was much longer than I had anticipated.

After a slow start, we packed up and left. We drove to the middle of BFE. Actually, we stopped in a little itty bitty town to grab a bathroom and some food. One of the students was talking to one of the people in the store and told her what we were doing. When he told her we were going to another, even smaller town, she said something like "Oh, you better watch out for those people. Don't close your eyes!"

Once we got to the launch place, we set everything up. After a while, we launched!

We climbed back into the cars and proceeded to chase. Everything actually went pretty well during the entire flight. We were in constant communication with the package, so it was quite successful. The main problem that we had was that we didn't have anyone in our car that knew how to manage the radio. Therefore, we had to futz around with it for a long time to get it working. It worked for the first half, and then we screwed something up, and it stopped working.

Oh, at this point, I should mention that Crab Girl and Crab Boy came with us. So, when we couldn't get the radio to work, I got out my cell phone, hooked it up to the computer, and logged into aprs.fi, which is where we were broadcasting our position. Crab Girl sat with the computer in her lap telling me where the balloon was, what altitude it was at and how fast it was going. Constantly. A stream of information. It was the best navigation I have ever experienced! She is a natural!

Finally, we turned down a dirt road, got behind a very slow moving truck, and someone yelled out "I see it!" Then we all caught a glimpse of the balloon package falling out of the sky. We pulled up to the field, just as it was touching the ground. We all saw it splash down! It was great!

Then, back to work. Drop off the trailer. Pick up the car, and go home!

PD Issues

2010-03-21T22:03:00.000-04:00

As promised, here are my issues:

PD#1: He just needs more than I can give. It just feels like I give and I give and I give, but he just won't be satisfied. Why can't see see MY needs? Why is it all about HIM?

PD#2: Use the "&" to run the model in the BACKGROUND! You don't have to sit there at your desk the whole time it is running! Emacs! Use emacs! Not pico!!!! Who uses pico??? (In case you don't know, pico is the editor for pine, which I am sure enlightens a lot of you!)

PD#3: Uh.... Hmmm.... Stop fixing the model and do some science? Uh, I guess you can't do science with a crappy broken model that your adviser made.... Uh....

Ok, that was probably unsatisfying. It was unsatisfying for me too. I just want to rant and rant and rant, but I don't feel like I can/should.... I am mostly frustrated with PD#1 having intense personal issues, which I don't want to deal with.

I have to say that I don't have to "deal" with many personal issues at work, though. I would say that 90% of the students/post docs that I have worked with have brought very little personal stuff to me. Maybe it is because I am a super-dick and they can see the "I don't give a sh*t" tattoo just under my hairline. Just kidding. It is really tattooed across my left buttock.

Motivation in the Crapper

2010-03-19T10:40:00.000-04:00

After something like 4 weeks of constant work, I feel like I have broken through. Through what? I don't know. Perhaps I have broken through my motivation and now I can't do any work. I slept in this morning a bit, took some pictures on the way to work, before starting to bike, and got to work at something like 9:30. Very lazy. It is now 10:30, and the only thing I have done is check e-mail. I haven't even changed out of my biking clothes. Very sad.

Now I am blogging.

Yesterday I feel like I accomplished something (this is unusual for me). I got my Arduino microprocessor to take measurements from my temperature, humidity, and accelerometer sensors and write the data to a USB stick. This may sound easy, but it is NOT! I promise! I have to get my cameras working today (i.e., the microprocessor has to turn the cameras on, then tell them to take pictures every 10 seconds). This is all to avoid the real problem of getting the microprocessor to talk to my radios and GPS. That is going to be problematic. I am afraid. Luckily, one of the students in my class is going through the same problem, so I am working with him to solve the communication issues. See, professors don't just profess, we learn from the students too. Especially as the students learn. It is all about education!

I am definitely still having issues with Post Docs. Large issues. But, I will probably wait until tomorrow to blog about that. I promise. Tomorrow.

Until then, I will will try to motivate myself to put on my pants.

Greetings from the Other Side

2010-03-10T21:31:00.000-05:00

I am 0.5 days into recovery from Caffeine addiction. I can't do it! The cravings! They are killing me!

And then, I found three Diet Mt. Dews in my office as I was leaving the office today. Holy crap! I am back on the Caffeine! Three more days of addiction!

15 Years

2010-02-28T10:33:00.000-05:00

Today is CrabMama and my (unofficial) 15 year anniversary. It is unofficial because we got married twice - the first time for financial reasons, the second time for love. Well, the first time was for love too, but her financial aid forms were due, so it was motivated by money. In celebration of our big day, we went to McDonald's and ate some french fries, got Chinese food, and watched a movie at home. "Why McDonald's?" you ask. Well, about 18 years ago, CrabMama worked at MD's. I drover up to where she was working and asked her if she wanted to move in with me. Oh, so romantic! Last night, we went to the same MD's, sat in the same booth (actually, it has been renovated, so the booth doesn't exist anymore, but, we sat close), and ate french fries, just like we did 18 years ago. The girl who served us wasn't born yet when we had this conversation that we were celebrating. That was depressing. Another sad thing is that both places that we worked when we first met don't exist anymore.

After snarfing our large fry, I happened to look down as the nutritional information. That is some scary sh*t. 500 calories for a large fry! 25 grams of fat! Wow, it is good that we split it.

We next went to the Chinese restaurant close to our house and got some food. CrabMama got steamed vegetables (what's the point?) and I got Kung Pao Chicken. Hopefully this is a tiny bit more healthy that MD's, since there was nothing fried. I only ate about 1/3 of it, too, since the portions were huge. The restaurant was clearly designed for take out only. Subway has more tables in it. They decorated it with while wall paper. No pictures. No words. No nothing. Just white wallpaper. Extremely uninviting. (Just think about all of the valuable information that you are learning from this blog post!)

We watched "Amelia", which I thought was a pretty good movie, even though you knew the ending. I didn't know much about her at all, except for the obvious things, so it was an educational experience.

Our official anniversary is in August, so we will probably do something more adventurous then. We are actually planning on traveling out west for the month of August. Since we are "discouraged" from paying ourselves for all three months of the summer, I have pretty much (notice the subtle qualifier) decided to take a month-long vacation. One of the problems with this idea is that there are probably going to be all sorts of meetings and crap during August. But, I will just miss them. I can do that, right?

This week is spring break for the students (not for me!) I am hoping that I can hole up and write some reports. I have a bunch of them that all due right about now (just got an official overdue notice this morning!) I think that there are three grant reports that all due right now. Then I have a third revision of a review that I have to do (I told them that I didn't want to see it again, but they sent it anyways). And I got two proposals to review from NSF this week (you get an e-mail from the program manager, not asking if you want to review it, but with instructions on how to download it and the review criteria. Nice.) So, more crap to do.

One of the problems that I am struggling with right now is how to keep track of all of the projects/stuff that I am working on right now. I have been taking notes on some paper, but it doesn't feel very modern to do that. I was going to get a lab folder, which I think would be good too, but I have so many things going on, that I should get one for each project. A guy that I work with does it with a three-ring binder, paper, and tabs for the different projects. This is probably the best idea that I have heard. I was trying to think of something a bit more high tech, though. I have EverNote, which seems to be pretty cool, but I have to play with it a bit more. The main issue I have with computer note taking is that it seems sort of offensive to do this, since people automatically assume that you are checking e-mail or working on other things instead of taking notes. It also feels more natural to take notes on paper. So, I am considering taking notes on paper, then scanning them in with my fancy scanner and putting them into EverNote. One cool thing about this idea is that I can scan images that my students/PostDocs bring me to look at. Well, this is definitely a continuing adventure.

Short updates:

1. Children taking ice skating lessons at Veterans Park. Highly recommend. Very professional. Very.

2. Still learning guitar. Don't have much time for practice. But learning.

3. Didn't work out at all last week. Fail. Fat. Blob. Sad.

4. Cold. Snow.

5. Sleeping badly.

6. Twitchy eye due to stress. I have been wearing glasses for the last few days because I can't see right. I guess that is bad.

7. CrabGirl made us a cake for breakfast. Marble cake with pudding frosting with brownies sprinkled on top. Wow!

8. Pictures are mostly of trees and snow and things lacking in color. We have about another month of this weather. And then another month after that until it is actually "nice" outside.

9. I am going to give up Mt. Dew. This is it. Once the supply that I have right now runs out, I am done. Bring on the Excedrin!

10. I think that I am going to make a doctor's appointment too. It has been about seven years.

Enough for today.

UberBusy

2010-02-13T14:25:00.000-05:00

I must apologize for not posting in 2 weeks. Things are getting a little crazy again.

It seems like we have shifted our schedule a bit. I am getting to work later and staying later. This means that when I get home, we eat pretty much right away, I read to the kids, and then we either practice guitar or we get ready for bed, depending on the time. Most of the time, the kids are not ready for bed until 8:30 or 9:00, which sounds early, but it is rather late. It seems like we have very little time at all to "relax" at night.

One of the issue that I am having is that I got a new camera, which is great, but it taking a while to learn all of the subtleties of downloading pictures and uploading them to the web. I pretty much have given up on iPhoto, due to the fact that you can't "see" the pictures outside of iPhoto anymore (if you open up a finder window, the iPhoto Library no longer appears as a folder - it appears as a file, which means you can't walk through the pictures outside of iPhoto). I started using the software that came with the camera, which allows you to download them into custom directories (I store mine in subdirectories of years then months, then year_month_day), which makes it very easy to find the pictures. I then use Picasa to look at the pictures and upload them. I don't like the way Picasa doesn't allow you to view all of the pictures as one library (which I never thought I would want to do... except when you take 5-6 pictures every day for a couple of weeks and you want to browse through them all.) The camera software crashes all of the time, which means some nights it takes 30 minutes to upload pictures, which is problematic. A lot of my relaxation time lately has been taken up by fighting with camera software.

If you want to see my photoblog, which is where I have been spending most of my time, it is at http://avisionofthepresent.blogspot.com/. While I would rather spend some time writing and such, the photoblog is somewhat easier to maintain, because there is little thought in the posting process, and I can do this when sitting on my *ss watching TV.

Another thing that I have been doing lately which has been taking a chunk of my time is working out. We have a rowing machine, which I have been using pretty much every day for the last two weeks. The sad thing is that I don't really think that it is helping at all. I am pretty sure that I have gained five pounds in the last two weeks, and my stomach feels a little strange. I could convince myself that this might mean that I am getting muscles in places that I have never had muscles before, but this would be a glass-half-full viewpoint, which is outside of my abilities. I interpret as my body telling me that I shouldn't be working out and eating pizza is really the answer. Mmmm, more pizza.

Anyways - that takes like 30 or so minutes in the morning. So, I am down about 60 minutes total each day, due to the working out and the camera crap. This makes it feel like I have less free time, which isn't really true, since I am just using my free time to do things. It is funny how that works.

At work, things are absolutely freaking crazy. Here are the proposals that I am currently working on:

1. A Major Research Instrumentation proposal for NSF. Only three proposal from each university are allowed to be submitted, so I have written a proposal to the university to try to allow me to write a full proposal to NSF. I just submitted this yesterday, and my associate dean just e-mailed saying that he thinks that I am asking for way too much money from NSF. I am not sure that I understand this, since the maximum amount awarded will be $5M, while I am asking for $3.5M. This seems quite reasonable to me, but he seems to thing $0.5M is the level we should be seeking. I have to call NSF and ask some opinions about this. Something I crossed off my todo list gets back on. Crap.

2. A CyberPhysical proposal for NSF. I am not the PI of this one, but am a Co-PI. This is an interesting program - it is aimed at making computers work more autonomously. Sort of. Basically working on feedback algorithms that allow for the dynamic readjustment of things given the sensor readings. It incorporates all sorts of things, such as brain surgery and brakes on cars. Basically anything in which a computer and a system are involved. We are proposing to develop an orbital prediction system that will work with many, many cubesats to better specify the upper atmospheric density allowing for more accurate collision avoidance. It will be a big proposal involving a bunch of Co-PIs.

3. A CubeSat proposal for NSF. This is due in May. We are going to use RAX as a base-line mission, but measure the thermospheric density, like we are proposing in #2. The NSF budget will be enough to build and launch a single CubeSat, which we will use to investigate the density structure in the thermosphere. Which is a perfect lead in for...

4. An Explorer mission for NASA launching ~100 CubeSats, all of which will measure the thermospheric density. We will then have global coverage of the thermosphere, which has never been done before. It is taking NASA to a new level. This proposal will be about $200M, and is due around a year from now. It is super-scary. I have never done anything like this before, and I am a bit intimidated by it.

5. I should mention that I am involved in at least one other NASA Explorer mission.

I am working with a student team who is helping me with mission concepts for #4. They are also interested in helping write the proposal for the NSF CubeSat program. At this point it is difficult to tell whether their assistance will be a help or a hindrance. They have interesting ideas and are willing to do a lot of leg-work, but they don't have much experience doing this type of thing (i.e., blind leading the blind). The meeting we had yesterday was the most interesting we have had, and I think that they are starting to go above the cost-benefit line. I am hoping that this is a very positive sign.

I should also mention that this is the season for letters of support/recommendation. I hate this aspect of my job. Absolutely hate it. There are some people that I can write extremely positive letters for in minutes, but the vast majority of letters take a good hour or two to write. And most of the time, I am not really happy with them. Considering how important the letters are, they really need to be perfect. These letters really shape the person's life. The vast majority of the students that we accept into graduate school are accepted because their letters are glowing. Without those letters, they are simply a GPA - line them up in order and start taking people off the top. This is not the best strategy for getting the best students.

Last week I got handed four papers to read. Two from Post Doc #1, one from Post Doc #3 and one from Grad Student #1. These require time also. Some of them are fantastic and don't require any major changes, but at least one required doing some more simulations and changing things around a lot. Which is the second time that we have majorly changed the paper. It was quite disappointing for everyone involved.

Then Post Doc #2 has been making significant progress on the solver that she is working on. But she has been having issues which she doesn't understand. Last week I spent a couple of days working with her on the code, which is good because the code progress is accelerated significantly, but bad because I am so freaking busy. But the results are so beautiful! She is working on the only big issue left with my main code that I work with. Once this aspect works, it will be on par or better than all of the models like it in the world. I hired her specifically for this purpose, and it is paying off.

Then I have a lot of year end reports to write. I have realized that I haven't gotten much of the science done, so I am scrambling to get SOMETHING to show. So, over the last couple of days, I started some simulations to compare with data from systems like I am proposing to use in #1. After two days of solid work on this, I have some pretty sweet results. It is not much at this point, but they are really cool. What they point to is that the atmosphere is significantly out of hydrostatic equilibrium almost all of the time. Our model is the only one that doesn't assume hydrostatic equilibrium. When we compare results, we have to multiply our vertical winds by a factor of 50 in order to match the measured winds. This doesn't sound like good news at all - but it is! It says that the atmosphere is MUCH further away from equilibrium than we have EVER thought. It is amazing how badly we do, even using the most sophisticated techniques available. We just don't understand this stuff at all!

Ok. I should go. This post is way too long already.

I guess this is the long answer to the question "where have you been?"

The Last Week or So

2010-01-30T15:25:00.000-05:00

Well, a while has passed since I last posted, so I am behind, yet again. Therefore, I will go a few mini-blog-posts that summarize what I have been up to. These are in a random order.

Brother's Car Dies - Money to the Rescue

Well, the title pretty much tells the whole story. My brother's car died - the timing belt broke. In fact, the timing belt was due to be changed in 15,000 miles, so it broke very early. Ah, Chrysler, what a wonderful (i.e., total sh*t) company. It ended up costing about $50 to tow and $750 for the repair. He didn't have the money, so I "loaned" it to him. This was sort of sad, since we just paid off all of our credit cards about 2 days before this. We were just talking about how we could save a little money and get ahead, and then we had to find some money for this. It sort of depressed us for a bit.

NASA Meeting

Right now I am in Florida at a NASA meeting. This is an interesting meeting, since we meet for about 8 hours a day, but we spread it out from 8-12 and then from 5-8, so we had a break from 12-5. Because I am a workaholic, I thought that is was a great opportunity to get caught up on some work. Well, that didn't turn out very well, because there were so many other meetings that I had to do while here. And then, we had to get lunch each day. The days end up being pretty long. I will admit that it was 70-75 degrees each day, which is much better than the 10-15 degrees at home. I will also admit that the meeting was much better than I expected it to be. I found that I couldn't do very much work during the meeting because I was paying attention, which is a good sign for the meeting.

Last weekend I got to spend a bit of time with my sister down in Miami, which was very nice. She took me to a country music festival, which was adventurous. There were a ton of people there, and it was in a very casual setting - basically in a park, where you could plop down anywhere you wanted to. I would say that 1 out of every 1 person was drunk. Ok, maybe 1.9 out of 2 people were drunk. All I am saying was that there was probably a mega-gallon of beer drunk. Which makes it fun to watch people. Here is one of the most interesting people I saw. I don't think that I have ever seen a big dude with cut-off shorts and cowboy boots (well, maybe they were cowgirl boots...) After the festival, I had a nice debate with my brother-in-law about college basketball vs. college football playoffs, and health care.

CrabBoy Hits 1/2 Puberty

One of the things we noticed when CrabGirl hit 7-8 years old, she started testing limits and became more emotional. CrabBoy seems to be in that stage now. The other night, as he was breaking down into tears, he exclaimed "You just don't understand!" We tried our best not to laugh. We are trying to figure out how to get through this little bump in the road. I am sure it will pass soon.

iPod Causes Rift

CrabBoy is extremely jealous of CrabGirl, who saved enough money and got some help with Christmas to get an iPod touch. I had the naive impression that she would use this to listen to music or audio books, but she ends up playing computer games on it almost exclusively. This make CrabBoy nuts, because he wants a hand-held gaming system also. CrabGirl is unwilling to share, which makes sense, but is "unfair" to him. We'll been dealing with this issue a lot in the two weeks.

The USA Today

It is shocking to me that a newspaper that is distributed to people all of the United States of America could make very, very stupid mistakes. Although it is pretty clear what is wrong with this chart, can you see it? By my estimate, 112% of the people believe that the worst decade was the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s or 2000s. That is a LOT of people. Way more than half! Indeed, of the 1,504 surveyed, 1684.5 of them answered the survey! This seems more like an Afghanistan election than a survey! I guess this shows the problem with the USA educational system. Right on the front page.

Things That I Enjoy

2010-01-15T22:38:00.001-05:00

I have noticed that a fair number of my blogs have a slightly negative ring to them. Some may say that I, perhaps, have a negative view on life. Others may claim that my glass has never been close to half empty. Well, for all of those who look upon me with sadness in their eyes for my sad, sad, state, let me just say that I am actually a relatively happy person (except for when I am not). I do enjoy things. I just don't enjoy blathering about them to people who would rather hear me bitch and complain (really, wouldn't you?)

But, I have come realize that I should be doing things more for me. I should be out there on the front lawn, dancing my white *ss off to Katy Perry. I shouldn't hide my head in shame, drowning in sorrow, listening to The Cure. So, that is what I am going to do. It is a new day! Let us proceed!

Things that I enjoy:

1. Sex. Enough on that subject, since my mother reads this blog. Moving on.

2. Music. I tend to be on the safe side with music. I don't do a lot of buying music that I have never heard before, just to try it out. That is because I am a cheap *ss bastard. Just ask my wife. Luckily, one of the benefits of being a Professor (besides being able to profess!) is having graduate students who listen to music that was made after 1983 (read, The Police, Synchronicity). I now listen to such groups as The Fray and all of that depressing crap. My daughter loves (LOVES) Katy Perry. It is literally the only thing on her iPod Touch. I have to say that the sh*t really make me want to shake some tail when played at higher decibels. I would like to start listening to the Blues more. Any recommendations?

3. Playing with technology crap. I love my new HTC Hero phone (Google Inside!). I love figuring out how to build robots and program them. I love coding. I love teaching my class about balloons and my other class about rockets. I am an Uber-Geek.

4. I enjoy saying the word "Uber". I guess this word means "Super" in Latin. (The internets whispered this in my ear. If you read it on one site, it must be true. Uber-Smart.)

5. I love biking. But it is hard to bike when you are fat and lazy. My bike is sitting in my office, because I vowed I would take time at lunch to go riding. That worked for 2 days. So, if you are keeping score, it is Fat and Lazy 97 days and Biking 2 days. I seem to be doing almost as well as Michigan's Football team.

6. I love eating. Hmmm. This is direct conflict with #5. No wonder I hate myself. Too much inner turmoil. What do I enjoy eating, you ask? Well, that is a good question. I am an amazingly picky eater ( I wonder where Crab Girl gets this?), but my list of foods that I will eat is expanding. Obviously, ice cream is up there at number 1. Candy bars come in there pretty high too. (Now you are seeing where the fat and lazy come from, eh?) On the good food side, I like.... uh... ketchup? Oh, here, I got one - oatmeal! That has to be good for you, right? Bananas! Another one! (Although Crab Mama would like to outlaw Bananas because they have travelled something like 15 times around the globe to reach us and are only a nickel a pound. Something is not right there, and she doesn't like it. Besides, any fruit that can NOT be grown locally has got to be evil.) I could go on all day about food, but, you get the idea.

7. I love making lists. It makes me feel like I am doing something productive, but really I am not. Like right now.

8. I like watching movies and TV. I like watching the first season of a TV show, when you are totally naive about how sh*tty the show really is. I could name a few shows like this, but I won't embarrass myself by admitting that I watch (as my step-father so aptly put it) crap TV. With movies, I made the mistake of letting Crab Mama control our Netflix Queue. We just got Thirty Something Season 1, Disk 3. Ok, if this isn't crap TV, WTF is? Come on, can't we at least get some BSG? But, there really is GOOD TV out there (and I am not talking about educational TV). For example, 30 Rock has to be one of the funniest shows ever made. The one where they do a parody of Amadeus is just unbeilable. Arrested Development is also insanely funny.

9. I love traveling. (That is a lie. Everyone says that they love traveling, so I put it there just to fit in.)

10. I like reading to my kids. I sometimes complain about this vehemently, especially when I am super busy. But, I really enjoy doing it.

11. Just because I can't end on a sappy note, and #9 didn't really count, I will include another love of mine for your reading pleasure. I love sleeping. And, I have to say, I am good at it too. I spend a good 1/3 of my life sleeping, and I love every single second of it. I would do it more if it wasn't for work. And everything on this list. The only bad thing about sleep now, is that I am getting old, and when I get out of bed, my bones crack. I get stiff in bed (not that kind stiff, you sick perverts), and can't stay in bed for more than about 8 hours without my back aching. How sad is that???

So, in summary, I am old, fat, lazy, like to sleep, listen to chick dance music, rot my brain with bad TV, and I am an Uber-Nerd. It is amazing that #1 is even an option.

It is great to be alive!

Surfacing

2010-01-15T15:49:00.000-05:00

I finished one of my proposals and the four letters of recommendation. Starting on the next proposal, that my boss wants by today. Hmmm.... Maybe not.

While I don't feel like I can breathe yet, I feel like I can see the surface. Is there light up there?

Maybe I can spend five minutes to throw away some of the crap that has accumulated in my office over the last couple of weeks. Oh, and fill out my travel reimbursement for the meeting I attended last month.

On Ice

2010-01-10T10:25:00.000-05:00

The sun was out yesterday! Today the sun is also out! It is amazing. It was so bright yesterday that we were motivated to DO thing. Well, not really important things, but things.

We had decided that the kids should take an ice skating class that started yesterday. Crab Mama called the ice skating rink and asked them about the class including whether there was space. They responded that they thought there was space. We went to the rink and it turns out that the class was way overfull. There was no way that they could take the class. Nice.

We returned home and decided to skate on the pond, which meant that we have to move a bunch of snow. I did that for a long time. There are a few very flat spots on the pond, but the majority of it has lots of bumps in the ice. There are even some sticks and bits of grass sticking up out of the ice. Makes for adventurous ice skating! Today we are going to try to hose off the area a bit to see if we can level it out a bit. We shall see what a disaster that brings.

At work, all hell is breaking loose. I have a huge amount of crap to do. I have four reports that are due at NASA and NSF. I have two letters of recommendation to write for students who I don't really know. I also have a proposal due this week and two proposals that are due in a couple of weeks that I am not the PI of, but the people who are the PI are obsessive and want input on them 24 hours a day. We have meetings to talk about them, then drafts ever couple of days that we are expected to read. I don't think that I am actually going to see a nickle of the money, so my motivation to help is in the toilet. I have to teach my class. And, finally, looking at the reports that are due, and the severe lack of progress on anything that I am actually supposed to do, I should be doing some science.

I read my activity report from last year on one of my grants and thought - wow, I did some cool things last year. Hmmmm..... not so much this year.

This leads me back to the thoughts on what my expectations are for the Post Docs that work for me. In theory, I should be accomplishing three times as much as I did last year, since I have three "Post Docs" working for me right now. This is sadly not the case at all. I think that my productivity actually went down this last year.

My post from a few weeks ago about giving up and letting others do the science implies that they will actually get the science done and publish papers and such. I am probably impatient about this stuff, but it seems like progress is extremely slow, and not much is actually being accomplished. This is very frustrating to me, since I have the ultimate responsibility for the projects that we are working on.

Ok, I am going to StFU about this subject now.

I am out.

More Palindrome Days

2010-01-03T10:58:00.001-05:00

Thinking about this last night after posting, I realized how fortunate I am to think about yesterday being a palindrome, because they are quite rare. We are actually in a time of almost unprecedented palindrome dates! What a great time to be alive!

I imagine that you are saying to yourself, who gives a rats *ss. Well, my friends, you would be foolish to say something like that - especially in the presence of children! Let me tell you why.

In this century, there are only 11 palindrome days:

October 2, 2001 (20011002)
January 2, 2010 (20100102)
November 2, 2011 (etc)
February 2, 2020
December 2, 2021
March 2, 2030
April 2, 2040
May 2, 2050
...
September 2, 2090

This same series of days happens in 21xx, except the date is the 12th day of the month, and in 22xx, with the 22nd day of the month. After these three groups, we have to wait until 30011003 (October 3rd, 3001) for another date! That is 700+ years!

If we go backwards, we don't find a palindrome day until August 31, 1380! That means it was 621 years since the last palindrome day before the one in 2001. We live in a pretty unique time!

The best palindrome day was obviously November 11th, 1111. Did anyone notice this date at the time? How about the one in 111? There won't be another single digit one until November 11th, 11111. The next coolest will be November 12, 2111. If medicine improves dramatically, some of us could actually be there for it. Well, probably not - 141 years is a pretty long life, by any stretch of the imagination. So, in my life, I will be luck to see seven palindrome days. Most people see zero.

Palindrome

2010-01-02T21:21:00.000-05:00

Today's date is a palindrome! 20100102! Funky!

Mid-Life Something

2010-01-02T15:52:00.000-05:00

I woke up at 4 AM a few mornings, and nearly had a panic attack. I was thinking about death. I know that this won't come as a shock to most of you, but I don't believe that there is an afterlife. That means that when you die, you are dead. Like, there is nothing after death. That fact is really, really, depressing. In N years, I will cease to exist. We all will.

To me, this is sort of horrifying for the following reasons:

1. What is going to happen? What will my children be like? What about my grandchildren? What will cars be like? Will we ever get back to the moon? To Mars? Beyond? What is the world going to be like in 100 years? In 1000 years? I want to know. And I won't. Some of these I might know, but most of them, I won't. That is sad to me.

2. What is the point? If you are going to die anyways, what is the point to everything that we are doing? If you take a short view, it makes no real sense. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, would you go to work today? I think not. What if it was next year? How long would you work for? At what point do you say screw it to work and go out and enjoy life? In many ways this isn't practical, because you have to eat; but it really says that you should do something that you love. Or, maybe take it a little less seriously. This is very hard to do, though.

3. You could take the selfish attitude and basically do all self-fulfilling stuff. Why not? If you are going to die anyways, why not just enjoy life to the fullest? On the other hand, by doing some work, we can make life more pleasant for people around us and for our children and their children. How do you balance your own happiness with the happiness of the people around you and your offspring?

I have been thinking about memories of people too. How long will I be remembered? I have not really done anything of substance in my life. My students will remember me for a while. My kids will obviously remember me for a long time. I publish papers. The oldest paper that I have ever referenced is probably from the 1960s, implying that papers before this are not really read very much, and that 30-40 years is the lifespan of even the most read papers. If grandchildren will be the longest lasting memory of me, then perhaps they will remember me about 30-40 years after I die. After that, who will ever even know that I existed? So, from birth to death, to the end of remembrance, a life-time is perhaps 100-130 years. Even with a headstone in a graveyard, the oldest ones are only 150-200 years old. After that, they are even too weathered to read. The people are completely gone. Once again, sad.

These are the thoughts that kept me awake. Actually, it was mostly that I am going to cease to exist. That scares the sh*t out of me.

Happy New Year!

Movie Out

2009-12-27T21:53:00.000-05:00

Crab Mama and I went out to a movie this afternoon for the first time in months. Very nice. We were sadly one of the last people to arrive (as usual), and had to sit in the second row. Luckily the movie didn't have any explosions or action, so it was fine. With the previews I thought I was going to hurl. Ok, how old am I?

We then went home got pizza for us and the in-laws. It was very nice to not have to cook. I love cooking (even though I basically suck at it), but after a couple of days in the kitchen, it becomes a drain.

Two of the three in-laws (plus two of the four dogs!) leave tomorrow. Fantastic! Maybe I can start my vacation!

Christmas Post

2009-12-25T22:29:00.001-05:00

Crab Mama says that no one with a real life would post today. So, I am posting, just to prove that I have no life.

Updates

2009-12-24T13:33:00.000-05:00

Wow, I have only posted twice this month. That is just sad. Here are some updates, which I will pretend are mini-blog-posts:

1. Fail!

For the first time ever, four students have failed my class. There was a report that was worth 16% of their course grade, which they didn't bother turning in. It wasn't that hard of an assignment, and I graded it with a very lenient bend (the lowest score, without taking off for turning it in late, was 85%). So, if they had written five pages of random words, they would have done better. One of the students contacted me and told me that their report was on their USB stick, which they can no longer find. Why is it not on their computer? Well, they didn't want their hard drive to crash, which would wipe it out. It was the best excuse ever! One a more positive note, more students got an A+ than failed. I must be doing something right. I love teaching, but I hate assigning grades.

2. AGU: Done!

The American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco was just absolutely insane this year. First, I didn't have either of my two talks even started before I left on Sunday. Second, I felt like I was shot out of a cannon - I was busy from the moment I woke up until the moment I closed my eyes every day. As an example, on Sunday, I got up at 5:45 EST, to catch my 9:00 flight. When we got to SFO, we took a taxi directly to the meeting, which started at noon. Meeting until 7 PM. Dinner with colleague, work on talk a bit, then bed at 10 PM PST (for a ~19 hour day). Each day seemed like this, although none were really longer. I typically take a few hours off on Friday to shop and such for Christmas presents, but this year I didn't get a chance to do this until about 4:30 on Friday. It turns out that all of the exhibits closed well before then, so I couldn't get fossils and such for the wife and kids. How sad!

3. PD Update

My PD who is going home for the holidays is going to be gone much longer than expected. When he came to the US, he bought a round-trip ticket, with a return date last week. To get back to the US, he had to buy another ticket, which was very expensive at any reasonable time. This means that he is going to spend 3 weeks in Euro, instead of 2. And then he has to go back in ~March, because his Visa expires. Sigh.

4. Wife doing all of the work

Crab Mama has to be pissed off at me. She has been doing a crap-load of the house work for the last few weeks. I have been so busy working, that she has had to take over all of the crap work. Now I am not working, but I am exhausted and still unable to do anything. Well, I did wash dishes for 3 hours the other day. But, she cleaned the basement for about 20 hours yesterday, so I can't really say anything about doing anything. All pales in comparison to the awesomeness of the wife. I promise that I will step it up soon!

5. Broken!

Crab Boy broke his arm two days ago. It was a weird series of events that led up to this event. A few days ago, the kids went down to the pond in our yard and cleared off a bunch of the snow, just to play around. They spent hours down there, and were having a lot of fun. We decided that we should get them some ice skates for Christmas, since they were having so much fun just sliding around. The next day I bought some ice skates. The day after that, their friends came over, and brought their ice skates. This is interesting, since we never mentioned to them that the kids were getting ice skates for Christmas. The mother of the kids knew that our kids didn't have ice skates. So, why did they bring ice skates? I have no F-ing idea. So, they all go down to the pond and the friends start ice skating, while my kids just watch them. Crab Boy comes up to the house and he is practically in tears. I felt like sh*t. So, I go to the basement and get them their ice skates. Lace up and skate! A few hours later, after I have gone to work, and Crab Mama has come home, Crab Boy falls down and lands on his hands. His right wrist gave out a bit, and he came back up and complained to Mom. She felt around and didn't really like what was there. Call the doctor, call the urgent care place, etc. Eventually, everyone decides that he should just go to the ER. After a couple of hours in the ER, he gets an X-ray, and it turns out that he has a buckle fracture, which is basically like a compression of the bone. The Dr said that if he was a grown up, it would have really broken, but since he is a kid, it just broke a little bit. He now has a neon-green cast for three weeks. Not too bad.

6. In Laws!

There are three in law types here (Mother, Sister, Brother in-law-in-law) for the next 4 days. With two extra dogs. Yeah. Enough said.

7. Dance, Dance, Baby!

Crab Boy performed in his dance recital this last weekend. It was a hip-hop routine with 5 boys that are all under the age of 10. He tried very hard.

I guess that is about all that has happened in the last few weeks. I am emerging from the depths of the great blue ocean, so I should be able to write a bit more in the coming weeks.

Merry Christmas. I hope you get exactly what you want! I am sure that I will get what I deserve!

PS - If you find out what Crab Mama is getting for Christmas, it is not because I wanted to get it for her. I didn't want too! She has been asking and asking and asking! I had nothing to do with it! Ok? I am NOT a bad husband!

Another Week

2009-12-10T21:44:00.001-05:00

Wow, it has been over a week since I wrote something. That is crazy. I am entering a super busy time.

Typically, in December people in my community go to a gigantic conference. This is almost always during finals, which is next week. So, as I am trying to finish up class, by making a final, grading all of the stuff that I should have graded a week ago, and holding students hands; I am trying to help all of the people who work for me to finish their posters and talks and stuff. Oh yeah, I have one proposal that is absolutely due next week, and one that I hoped I could turn in (not going to happen). And, since I am going to be gone for a full week, I would like to spend some more time with the family (ain't gonna happen either). Today I got to work at 8 AM and left at 7:40 PM. I came home, ate some cereal and went back at it. I can't really work anymore, since my brain is fried. But, I finished my final exam - two versions!

I have yet to actually work on my two talks that I have next week. The really bad thing is that I have done very little on one of my talks, which is early in the week. This means that I am screwed. The other talk is easy to put together and I could do it in an hour or so. But, that one is Friday. I really wished that they were reversed.

Crab Mama says that I should go to my first talk, and when they call me, I should just say "pass!" and they can move on to the next person. If only.

One of the other things that makes life a little crazy right now is that all of the students projects are finishing up. So, I today I had to go to an almost 2 hour design review for one project, and tomorrow I have to go to another 2 hour review. That review is after we meet with students to go over their presentations and time them and such. Then, to add insult to injury, there is a faculty meeting at 3:30 tomorrow. They can have fun without me. Finally, tomorrow I have to give version 1 of the final exam from 5-6. After that, I can go home and start working on my talks. And do laundry. And pack. And see the kids.

Sh*t.

Five Minutes

2009-12-02T08:50:00.000-05:00

Ok, even though my last post said that I have entered a state of strange calmness, it doesn't mean that I am actually less busy. I should put that right out there. It is very difficult for me to even find five minutes for me to do anything like read blogs, let alone post. I haven't read any blogs in almost a week.

One of the issues is that on the homeschooling front, I am starting to do more with the kids. I don't really want to - but this is an argument that has been had over and over again. So, I have been spending a lot of time helping Crab Girl with math. She is learning how to do some pre-algebra stuff. For example, simplify the expression 3(6y-4x)-2(5x-2y). She is having to learn how to multiply by negative numbers and group like terms, etc. It is interesting to see how minds work to process this. She has to have a little table:
++ = +
+- = -
-+ = -
-- = +
to do the multiplication. These are little things that you don't even think about anymore, but are a small hill for her to get over. It is both frustrating and exciting to see her understanding grow at the same time. BTW, the answer is 22(y-x).

I have to have a talk with my Post Doc about vacation time and international trips. This last summer, I sent him on an international trip to a conference that I was interested in attending. He extended this trip and took a 4 week vacation. He is going back to his home this month for another 2 weeks. Then he asked me if he could attend another international trip in March (to his home country again). This is the part of the plan where I have to put my foot down and say that 6 weeks of vacation is more than enough for someone in one year. I don't get 6 weeks of vacation in a year. Post Docs shouldn't really either. Conversely, the question could be raised - if you are accomplishing all of the goals that are set out for you, should you be allowed to take as much vacation time as you want? For me, if I accomplish all of my goals, I think to myself that I set my expectations too low, so I make more goals. (Hence the reason I don't have five minutes.)

I have to go so I can teach class in a few minutes. Students are starting to come into class.

Super Lame

2009-11-24T21:36:00.000-05:00

I have been paying a lot more attention to my other blog, which is focused on taking a picture every day for year. It is, I must say, insane.

While I was in Europe, the students in my class took a test. There are 118 students in my class (no drops at all this semester!) There were 7 seven students that didn't show up for the test. A few of them e-mailed the morning of the test that they couldn't make it. Swine Flu. What are we to do. A couple more missed the exam because they forgot. WTF? This is insanity!

It seems like work has reached some strange metaphysical equilibrium. I seem to be much more calm at work and I don't seem to worry as much as I used to. I don't really know why. It is possible that I have completely given up on accomplishing anything. I now am going to live vicariously through my students and post docs. I have admitted it. In fact, I took a 3/4th finished study and gave it to my post doc. It is mostly written up, but I just don't have time to finish it. She will hopefully finish it off and publish it. Serenity.

In Euro

2009-11-13T14:26:00.000-05:00

Crab Girl and I are in Europe right now. I decided a while ago that I would like to take the kids with me every once in a while on a trip, and so this is her turn. We have been here for 5 days now, and it has been pretty nice. There have been food issues, but those were expected.

A friend of mine who comes to this particular city a lot gave us a map with all sorts of things indicated on it, that we were supposed to find and take pictures of. That kept us pretty entertained for a long time. Before my meeting started on two of the mornings, we wandered around looking for things. Today we took the whole day and wandered around. The hotel has some motorized (assisted) bikes that we could use. It was a lot of fun to go back and forth through the city.

We ended up at the History Museum, which is different than the Natural History Museum, which is what we thought we were going to. It was basically a lot of war stuff. There were other displays, but it seemed like there was a lot of violence taking place in Europe years ago. We then found the Natural History Museum and got to see lots and lots and lots of stuffed birds and other animals. It was quite impressive, although there were no dinosaurs, which may have been disappointing for the younger crowd.

After that we found some statues and paid a couple of bucks to ride an elevator up from the river, just to do it, then walk the 180 steps back down to get our bikes.

We almost got killed about 20 times today because of the traffic and our lack of maneuvering ability on our bikes. Left! We want to go left! Oh crap, now we have to figure out how to turn around and not get hit by the giant busses while we do.

Tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM we start our 19 hour voyage home (walk to the train station, 1.5 hours on train, wait for flight, fly for 1.5 hours, wait for flight, fly 10.5 hours, sit in line at passport control, wait for luggage, drive home). We have books, movies, games, a math book, and knitting. That should pass the time!

Anger

2009-11-04T12:02:00.000-05:00

I have to say that today I am relatively pissed off. There are a few reasons for this:

1. We live on a road in which there are only 10 houses. Therefore, we have to pay to have our road graded, plowed and maintained. Many of the people in our neighborhood chose to build their houses right on the road, even though they have 3-10 acres of land to choose from. So, to them, dust control is very important. I don't care about dust control because I live in the woods, where no dust settles. We have to pay for three dust control applications every year. The people also want to regrade the road twice a year, even though it only serves 10 houses. I find this ludicrous. Further, for weeks after the grading, the road is covered with loose gravel that is impossible to bike on. I bike. I also have kids that love to bike. It basically makes the road unusable for biking for a few weeks. Yesterday they graded the road, after only 5 people voiced that they wanted the road graded (with one adamant NO - me). So, that really pissed me off. And it will continue to piss me off for a month.

2. Maine struck down their gay marriage law. So now about 31 states in the good old US of A have explicit laws banning gay marriage or explicitly have countered laws that have made it legal. It is just a travesty. Aren't we the land of the free? What does "free" mean? You are welcome to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't counter my beliefs. Even if it has absolutely no affect on me what-so-ever. If I believe something and you believe something else - screw you. The sad thing is that over half of the people in all of these states voted to do this. We, as a society, believe in discrimination. We believe in taking rights away from people because of who and what they are. It is unbelievable to me how hypocritical people are in this country.

3. I am obviously PMSing, even though I don't have the right junk. No amount of Mt. Dew will help.

Global Warming

2009-11-03T21:17:00.000-05:00

Today, on the way home today I heard an argument about global warming that I had never really heard, but similar to other arguments. The guy stated that we are human beings, and therefore animals, just like all other animals on the planet. We have altered our environment, like other species have. It is a completely natural thing to do, and so we should not worry about it.

While talking to Crab Mama about this, we came to the conclusion that this is completely natural. What happens is that the top of the food chain ends up over-indulging and the food chain completely collapses. Once this happens, the population completely collapses and reduces to something like 10% of the original population.

So, what will happen, if we continue along the path that we are traveling, is that we will completely destroy our food chain and our population will be decimated. Luckily, we in the United States of America won't suffer nearly as much as the rest of the world, because we will continue to buy land to grow cattle and corn over the whole globe while the rest of the world starves to death. Well, the strong survive, which is also completely natural.

It is pretty clear that people will just come into a new equilibrium with nature (the similar argument), but there is an extremely good chance that this will be with a significantly reduced population. Which is completely natural. Which is sad.

The glory of daylight savings time

2009-11-02T22:11:00.000-05:00

Well, ok. Not really.

But, at least on Sunday, when noon came around (according to my grandfather clock) and I still hadn't gotten dressed, I could justify it because it was actually 11 AM according to my computer.

Tonight it feels like DST has been completely squandered. It is 10 PM and we are not in bed yet. We vowed that this year we would take DST to go to bed early and get up early! Alas, it lasted less than one day. Such is the way of things in our house. Vows are like Halloween candy - here one day, gone the next.

Shot out of a cannon

2009-10-25T22:45:00.000-04:00

That is how I feel. Last Monday I left for work, and I don't think that I have stopped since then. It won't stop tomorrow. It won't stop Tuesday. It definitely won't stop on Wednesday, when I have to be on an airplane at 7:10 AM (F*CK!) Maybe Wednesday night I can try to go to bed early, but most likely I will have to go out to dinner with fellow researchers and socialize. Thursday? I can fly home and then go straight home without stopping at work? Maybe.

I am tired. Really, really tired.

Tomorrow we have to leave the house by 8:00, so I can drop the kids off and then get to class. While that is not very early to normal people, I have kids who are now accustomed to getting up at 8:30 or so, so 7:00 AM comes really early. Oh well.

I am not complaining. I am just whining a bit.

Oh sh*t. I forgot to finish the laundry. Crap.

Well, now that the dishes are done, I can go do that before I go to bed.

NPR

2009-10-20T13:05:00.000-04:00

8882589966 (call now, with your pledge!)
That's 8882589866
Let me say it 14 more times, just in case you didn't hear me 2 seconds ago:
8882589866
8882589866
8882589866
8882589866
8882589866 (how much should you send in? well, that is up to you!)
8882589866
8882589866 (but we are looking for a dollar a day)
8882589866
8882589866 (or maybe a dollar a week)
8882589866
8882589866
8882589866
8882589866 (or whatever you want!)
8882589866
I want to kill myself.

Before I do, I should will all of my money to NPR.
8882589866

I was going to do a calculation of how much time is spent in commercials on a normal radio station over a year, and then add up all of the "commercials" during a normal day on NPR, and then take the 2 solid weeks a year (more like 20 days...) in which we are bombarded with 8882589866 (call now with your pledge!) I bet that my NPR station spends almost as much time as a commercial station if you factor in the two pledge drives.

8882589866

AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!

Mike Doughty

2009-10-15T15:59:00.000-04:00

Last night, Crab Mama and I went to see Mike Doughty in concert. It was at a very small venue, with only about 200 people there. It was probably the most intimate concert that I have ever been to. We were in the 5th row, which is just crazy. It was a great deal of fun. He had a Question Jar where you could put questions in and he would answer them. It was hilarious (e.g., What elevates a normal Bon Bon to a Super Bon Bon?) Crab Mama and I had seen Soul Coughing in concert in about 1997 (with Geggy Tah - ha!) in Subaru, CO.

I should have taken my camera, but I am lame.

Subaru

2009-10-09T21:49:00.000-04:00

Boulder, CO, should be called Subaru, CO. I would estimate that 10% of all cars in Subaru are Subarus (Subari?) That might not sound like much, but imagine if every 10th car that you saw looked identical. That is what it is like! Subaru is a homogeneous city of outdoor loving, vegan, smart, Subaru-loving left-wing nut-jobs!

Ok. I am just saying that. Subaru is a great city. It is just freakish in its love for Subari.

On Travel

2009-10-07T23:25:00.000-04:00

Again.

But this time it is a bit different. Crab Boy and I are in the great state of Colorado, at meeting on how the aurora is affected climate change. Wow. It is a bit of a stretch, but this is what scientists do - leave no stone unturned!

The most interesting talk that I heard was from a woman who is quite unique. She has to be about 75 years old, and wears dresses with flowers all over them. She also wears a flower in her hair. Unique. She got up and gave a talk on why the idea of airlines worrying about flying over the poles because of high energy particle precipitation is complete bull sh*t. She pretty much used those words. It was hilarious. I expected that her talk would be quite boring and casually dismissed, since she is an "old guard" scientist - no using any data from after I was born, but it was inspiring. She looked back at ice core data and other long term data (old school!) and came up with the highest energy precipitation events that have EVER occurred. Then she figured out how much exposure airplanes would have gotten during the events, and concluded that they would have had to fly around for something like 2000 hours in the middle of the storm (which lasted < 2 days), to get a dose that anyone would consider dangerous. Now - she did say that a pregnant woman would have only had to fly around for something like 20 hours.

The very next talk was a report on some grant that people had gotten to study this very thing. They used the latest, greatest data and models, and came to the exact same conclusion - but didn't actually say that it was then worthless. They reported the numbers in the exposures that you would get, but didn't say anything about maximum dose rates or anything. If you remembered from the previous talk, the numbers were almost exactly the same, so they were the same tiny dose. They concluded that they had a great product and that the airlines should use their models. I think that they concluded that the airlines don't need to use their models....

Crab Boy and I have eaten out a few time, gone on a hike, and had a good time with some friends. We have hung out together and basically just enjoyed being together, which is what this whole trip was about (well, the science was there too...)

I discovered an interesting thing about children today - they don't know how to tie shoes anymore, since all of their shoes are either slip-on or Velcro. Crab Boy just (re)learned how to tie his shoes this last week, after the purchase of a pair of new tennis shoes. Here is a picture of his accomplishment this morning of tying his shoe for the 3rd time ever! I would say that I almost cried, but, in truth, I almost cried when I found out that he couldn't tie his shoes in the first place. But, after thinking about it, I can't actually remember the last pair of shoes that he had in which he actually had to tie them. Ahhh... modern technology. Tying shoes is so, like, iPods with buttons.

Pandora Love

2009-10-01T22:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I did a system upgrade on my laptop, which makes you reboot. One of the things that was installed was iTunes 9.0. So, when I fired up iTunes today, I got to wait for about an hour while it refigured out the gapless play list crap. So, while it did that, I rediscovered Pandora.

God, I love Pandora. It is the best website ever. We besides google. And Wikipedia. Well, better than Wikipedia. But, you get the idea. It is really, really, really good.

So, if you have never pandoraed, I would highly recommend going to pandora.com, getting an account, typing in your favorite artist, and start listening. Then type in other artists, and see what comes up. You won't be disappointed.

Would I lie to you? Would I say something that wasn't true?

Got a car today. 2005 Subaru Outback Sport. Silver. 5-speed manual. Very nice.

Mirror Images

2009-09-27T22:23:00.000-04:00

Looking at my kids, I see a large amount of myself in both of them. It is often very scary. For example, my daughter likes better to set things up than to actually do them. Getting folders and pencils and paper and everything for school is exciting, but to actually write is a drag. She has joined a robotics club and she is working on a robot, but is not really all that excited about building the robot. She knows the wiring diagram by heart and can do it, but just doesn't really want to. When I have done it "for her", she then is very happy and quite excited to clean it up (i.e., redo the whole thing with shorter wires, making it all look much neater). She also doesn't have much interest in programming on the robot, although that comes and goes. With the Lego robots, she figured out how to do the programming and basically dropped it after that - even though she really only scratched the surface of it.

I definitely see myself in this behavior. I think that since I am older now, I have much more patience, and can actually see that there are important things left to learn. I also think that some of the issues are with fear of failure. She shows that she can pick up the stuff that is mildly challenging with ease, but doesn't want to delve any deeper for fear of not being able to do it. Maybe. I think that I do this, and so am pushing my emotional whateverness onto her.

Anyways, it can sometimes be quite frustrating, since we start doing these projects together, and we are both sort of excited by them, and then she loses interest.

Well, I probably should just be happy that I can get my pre-teen daughter's interest in anything, let alone stuff that interests me too.

Now, my son. I have to say that he is a complete mirror image of me. I think that someone took some of my cells, cloned them, and stuck them in my wife. If there is a part of her in him, I am not sure where it is. Actually - he is MUCH more adventurous than I am. That is definitely from my wife, which may shock some of you who know her. While he is not fearless, he will try new foods and is not nearly as fearful of new things as my daughter and I are. This is definitely a good thing. So, he is just like me, but better!

Ok, now that sounds like I love my son and have issues with my daughter.... That is really not true at all. My son is just like me, which means that he is a loud-mouth pain in the *ss. They are both great kids and wonderful to have around. They are, by far, the best things that have ever happened to me. (Even if I do yell at them sometimes.)

Under Water

2009-09-25T10:53:00.000-04:00

There have been a fair number of posts on various blogs that have reported having too many meetings and such to survive. I am in that position also. This week, of the "40" hours of time that I am supposed to be at work, 13 are NOT in meetings. That is 13 hours in which my graduate students and Post Docs and undergrads can come and ask me questions. 13 hours in which I can answer e-mail from people asking me to schedule more meetings, sign documents, and actually do things for the meetings that I am attending.

I had a student send me a $25K proposal to JPL that we are working on last night at 10:54 PM, and asked me to send a revision back to him by the end of the day today. I laugh. I have exact 1 hour of free time today, and I can pretty much guarantee that I will be asked to do many other things besides this as soon as I get back to my office from class.

Luckily, many of the meetings that I had the week are once in a lifetime meetings. Let's take a look at some of the more pleasant meetings:

1. Yesterday I got to be "yelled at" by my department chair (again!) and head IT person for buying non-rack-mountable computers that we put into the server room. The head IT person got it into her head about a year ago that our department chair was going to cut the room in half, and therefore we would have to get rid of machines and make everything much more compact. She started telling people that they could only buy rack-mountable hardware. Well, this type of hardware costs 2 times the amount of other hardware, so it is not very cost effective. Also, the premise is absurd - the department chair is not going to cut the server room in half. So, why should I buy these systems? Well, now it is because she has forced others to do it, so everyone has to. What an asinine reason - spend twice as much money because I forced other people to do it! Oh, and the kicker is that the machines were not for myself, but for the department chair.

2. I had to deal with a co-investigator who we are building some hardware for. He won some grants, and we are building the instruments for him. He asked us if we could lower the amount of the subcontract if he bought the raw parts, and we would integrate everything. I agreed to this, as long as everything was extremely clear. We also have a very hard to meet deadline on these instruments, because all of the engineers are overbooked for the next N months. So, yesterday, the guy tells us that he can't order any parts until December, because his funding from his university wasn't going to be in yet. I have engineers who are waiting on parts that were supposed to be ordered already (we thought they were ordered). WTF??? So, after explaining all of this to him, he agreed and is going to order the parts understanding that his university will eventually give him money. What a pain!

3. I had a meeting with all of the College's departmental and college-level advisers. Every time I go to one of these meetings, I feel like an idiot. Everyone there has been an adviser for about as long as I have been alive. They have these great systems set up and know exactly what to do when X, Y, or Z happens to a student. I, on the other hand, have no training what-so-ever in being an adviser, and don't even know some of the classes that students are supposed to take to graduate (like what the hell is the difference between humanities and social studies? Why do we care? And what is a humanities sequence? These are things that I should KNOW!) I raised this issue at the meeting, and they are going to start having training meetings for advisers. Wow! That is fantastic! The first meeting that they are having is going to be a report on what people learned at some advising conference. What? This has nothing to do with training us! The first meeting should be an open meeting to ask "What do you people not know? What questions do you have?" Let's get the known unknowns covered before we start talking about the conferences that we don't have time to attend.

Ok, I have overstayed my welcome and now actually have to work. Hopefully I can stick my head out of the fox hole in the next week and blog again. And maybe I won't get my head shot off.

Crash!

2009-09-18T09:05:00.000-04:00

The night before last we did our normal ice cream Wednesday. We normally go to Dairy Queen, because the kids love it and it is the closest ice cream place to our house. Last night we went to a different place that Crab Mama used to go to when she was but a wee little lass. We had our ice cream and were headed home, when a Toyota FJ Cruiser ran a stop sign and plowed right into us.

No one was hurt. They hit us right on my door and front quarter panel, which is probably the best place to be hit if you are going to be hit, and don't want your kids to be hurt. Crab Girl was a little freaked out, while Crab Boy took it pretty much in stride.

Yesterday we learned that the insurance company would like to total our car. We have only had it for about a year or so. I just bought snow tires last year and rims at the beginning of the summer so we wouldn't have to go swap wheels every 6 months (I can do that in the garage!) Crab Mama has complained for a while about her wonderful MiniVan. So, the question is, What Now?

When we got our (now dead) car, we did a lot of research on reliability versus mileage versus affordability. We also have been buying foreign cars for the last 15 years. We wanted to give an American car a try (or at least the perception that we were giving it a try...) We ended up buying a used Pontiac Vibe, which is a Toyota Matrix with a Pontiac sticker on it. That cleared our conscience while meeting all of our other criteria.

After looking around for an hour or so last night, we have come to about the same conclusion. Crab Mama basically said we should just replace the Vibe with an identical one. Then people can ask us if we got our car painted!

My selfless self wants to sell the MiniVan at the same time and buy Crab mama a Rav4 (her new dream car), and me a crappy old Toyota. This doesn't help the conscience, but it does help the husband brownie points. Crab Mama says she would rather have solar panels or a wood-burning stove or some "useful". Come On! Are you an American??? It is all about the car! Come On!

Well, so, there it is. We will probably buy another Vibe that is grey or gray or silver or .... red. So, if you see someone driving down the street in a Vibe that looks just like me, but it can't be me because that isn't my car, it's me.

Pre-Class Blurb

2009-09-14T08:35:00.000-04:00

Last semester, my class started at 10 AM. It was great, because I could show up to the building that I taught and sit there for about 90 minutes by myself. It was a very nice relaxing time in which I could do class prep or read e-mail or blog or whatever. This semester, my class starts at 9 AM. In some ways this is nice too, because I am done with class an hour earlier. When I get back to my office, it doesn't feel like the whole morning is gone. But, it does mean that I don't get that extra hour. Right now, I should be uploading my lecture and not blogging.

I think that more blogs will therefore happen at night, then, instead of in the calm right before class.

Ok. I have to upload.

The End

2009-09-07T20:54:00.000-04:00

This is the end. My only friend, the end.

Today is the end of summer. Tomorrow I can no long shirk responsibility and must become a grown-up again. The alarm is set for 6:30. The homeschooling schedule has been set. We all know what we have to do. Now, we just have to do it. Tomorrow is the beginning.

For the last week I have felt like crap. I have been congested and have been basically feeling like warmed over turds. So this weekend, I didn't get much accomplished. Neither did Crab Mama, since she was feeling about the same for the last couple of days. I read a bit today. Sat on the couch and read. I don't do that much. Today I said "F*ck it, I am going to sit my John Big-Bootie on the couch and read!" And that is what I did.

Yesterday we had the strangest visit of a relative that I have ever had. Ever.

I figure that you can measure the length of stay of a relative by some factors, some of which include how long it took them to get to your place, how close you are, how long it has been since you have seen each other and how many other people you have to visit while you are in town.

Crab Mama's family sort of breaks many of these rules. For example, when her Dad comes and visits us (a 45 minute drive each way), he typically only stays for about 30-60 minutes, which puts his travel time over his visit time. Interestingly, we only see him 2-3 times a year, which seems like it would mean that the visits should be longer. Also considering that he isn't very busy at all (so the variable drops out of the equation), you can solve for the variable "closeness". As is self-evident, this is relatively low.

Yesterday blew all my understanding of "closeness" (or "strangeness") out of the water.

Crab Mama's aunt was going to be in town for a day. She flew into Indianapolis and was there for work or something. Yesterday morning she drove up and was visiting with old friends and seeing where she used to live and such. Now, she used to live about 5 miles from us, so we were told that she was in town. About 6:00 yesterday, she calls and says "hey, do you mind if I stop over and visit?" Crab Mama says, "Sure, you are more than welcome!" So, we quickly clean up the house and prepare for the imminent arrival.

About 30 minutes later, the doorbell rings, the dogs go nuts, and she has arrived. Crab Mama steps outside to give her aunt a hug, and they just stand there. Her aunt brought a friend. I was standing in the kitchen, waiting for them to come in, but they just stood there. After about 2 minutes of talking, Crab Mama says "you can come in", but her aunt says "oh, no, we need to go". Uh. Ok. We convinced her to come into the house. She stepped in and looks around (like, stands there and looks around). We talk for a minute about dinner and such and she mentions that she is going to go out to dinner and has to go because she has to go to dinner with her friend (who is standing right there). We suggested a restaurant and they left. It was clear that they were going to the restaurant by themselves. So, uh, maybe they would ask us if we wanted to go? Spend a little time with your niece? WTF? They were there for literally less than 5 minutes. Crab Mama hasn't seen her aunt in about 5 years or so. And all it comes to is a five minute visit? That was just bizarre. My world is turned upside down.

To Do List

2009-09-05T14:46:00.000-04:00

These are the thing that I have crossed off my to do list in the last week or so.

1. Read Student #2's paper #1.
2. Read Student #2's paper #2.
3. Read Student #2's reply to the referees.
4. Read Previous Student's paper. Again. And Again.
5. Read Student #1's thesis. Again. Fax completed thesis paperwork.
6. Print out paper work from person, fill it out and drop it off.
7. Write a letter of recommendation.
8. Buy tickets for Switzerland trip.
9. Buy tickets for Boulder trip.
10. Reserve hotel and car and register for Boulder trip.
11. Buy tickets for Mike Doughty at the Ark.
12. Write a thank-you e-mail to NASA person.
13. Bug collaborator about workshop that he is organizing.
14. Figure out class schedule. Make web site and crap for class.
15. Get Student #1 to run model for a few months and give results to person that I don't want to collaborate with (#1), so they can sit on the results and do nothing with them.
16. Figure out why Crab girl is not feeling well (not completed). Call Dr. Schedule appointment.
17. Get IT people to finish installing software on laptop (not completed).
18. Go to the bank.
19. Reimbursements - June meeting #1, June meeting #2, June meeting #3, Balloon crap.
20. Set up meeting times with six students/post docs/engineers and group meeting.
21. Get dry ice.
22. Test magnetometer.
23. Finish AGU abstract #1 and #2.
24. Finish paper and get feedback from people.
25. Write on my blog.

Now, wasn't that an exciting post!

Paper One "Complete"

2009-09-01T21:29:00.000-04:00

Well, I pretty much have finished the first paper that I had as a goal to finish this summer. I have to address some comments by co-authors (Damn you co-authors! You know who you are! :-) I have also figured out a big step forward in my next paper. I have one week to finish this next paper. One week. Only four work days.

Oh Crap.

Only four work days until classes start.

Oh Crap.

What am I teaching again? Wow. I have to really start thinking about this class.....

I think that this year I am going to try to take the kids on more trips. I will try again to take each on a separate trip and see how it goes. The first trip I took Crab Girl on went pretty well - she played video games and watched movies pretty much the whole time, and then, on our off hours, she wanted to play in the swimming pool the whole time. I don't think we left the hotel the whole week. She got to ride in First Class on the way home, which thrilled her (they upgraded me, and then couldn't downgrade me when I requested it since the plane was full, so they upgraded her!) Crab Boy's first trip was pretty good also. We went to Washington DC for three days. Two days were in meetings and one was just walking around seeing the sights. He collapsed in exhaustion a few (dozen) times, but besides that it was a fun day.

This year I think that I will probably take Crab Girl with me to Switzerland (a week) and Crab Boy to Boulder (3 days). This means that I have to take Crab Mama somewhere better than Switzerland (in November). It is our 15th anniversary next year, so the trip better be (1) without kids; and (2) good. Any suggestions? Oh, we are talking about the end of February. So, no Alaska or Maine or Canada. One of my students went to Italy a little while ago. How does that sound? Expensive? Oh, and I should say, Saline is out of the question! So is Milan!

Ok, back to thinking about how the summer is almost gone and how little I have accomplished this summer and .... sob.

I Did It!

2009-08-25T22:24:00.000-04:00

I bought Welcome to the Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes to Hollywood!

Shocking, eh?

We're a long way from home....

Ok, enough of that.

Today was a crap day. Crab Mama is out doing field work all week, so I am in charge of the kids. Yesterday I had a lot of meetings and crap, but the person who normally takes the kids on Mondays (we take her kids on Wednesdays) couldn't this week, since one of her kids is sick. So, they got to have a fun-filled day in the office with me. We got to go to a lunch meeting. Fun, fun, fun! Today, Crab-Girl woke up really late, so we didn't get to the day care place (day care for an 11 year old? I am not sure what to call it...) until 9:30. Then I discovered I had a very low tire. I drove to a gas station and bought some air (what the hell is up with buying air? It's air!) only to find that there was a hole in the side wall. So, I inflated as much as I could and got to spend the morning at Belle Tire. I got into work at about noon. Then had to leave at 2:20 to go pick the kids up and take them to guitar lesson. Just over 2 hours of work! Wow! I got cheered up a bit late in the day by going to out ice cream with the family. Then, when we got home, they gave me my birthday present - a food processor! Hells Yeah! Now I can make all sorts of stuff from Cook's Illustrated!

Well, it was a frustrating day, but I actually managed to write a bit today, which is good. I am hoping to submit two papers before school starts. I have two weeks from tomorrow. I think that I am screwed, but who knows, maybe I can pull it off. I have the first paper almost completely done. It is a nice piece of work, I think. But, I am biased. The second paper requires a fair bit of work. I actually have third and forth papers sitting in the wings too, but I don't think that those are going to happen. Maybe before the end of the year?

AGU abstracts are due September 3rd. Do you have yours done?

Happy Birthday!

2009-08-23T22:33:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday to Me
I'm one hundred and three
I look like a monkey
And I have to go pee.

According to the CDC mortality statistics, there is a good chance that I will live 40.5 more years. On the other hand, I could die tomorrow.

It is interesting that at this point in my life, I think about death on my birthday. At what age does this happen? Does it happen to everyone?

I am not actually depressed about it. Just thinking.

Paper Length

2009-08-22T11:00:00.000-04:00

Spacecataz says:
To be fair, said former student has been in a political slap fight with a scientific adversary, and this has been the main reason for the ridiculous size of the paper. The other guy keeps demanding more and more in the paper because he doesn't believe said student's results.

This raises a couple of excellent points:

1. How long is too long of a paper.

2. What do you do when reviewers or exterior people keep asking for more and more from the paper.

The first is relatively easy to figure out. Journals have guidelines for this, and the typical one is that papers should be no longer than 10 pages. While this is often difficult to do, it is a very good goal. In fact, some journals penalize you for going over 10 pages to the tune of $100+/page over 10 pages. For a 20 page paper, that is $1000. In publishing land, that is not a HUGE sum of money, but it is costly. For the specific paper that we are discussing, once it is journal format, it will be something on the order of 40-50 pages, which will cost $3000-$4000 extra, just in penalties. Not to mention the color figures and normal page fees, etc. This is looking to be a $8,000 paper. That, my friends, is expensive for a publication.

Next you have to consider how much people can swallow in one bite. A ten page paper is something that can be read in one long pull. Once you good at reading papers (i.e., you can skim it and get the salient points very easily), it is easy to digest a 10 page paper in under an hour. When you go to a paper that is over 20 pages in length, it is excessively difficult to actually accomplish this. A 20+ page paper no longer has a central focus - it has many areas of focus. This makes it harder to skim and gleam the major point(s). The details start to take over, since it is probably chocked full of them. In fact, this is probably the main difference between a 10 and a 20 page paper - the details. In a 10 page paper, there is a central (simple) theme that is conveyed with the minimum number of details to get the point across. In a 20 page paper, it may either have multiple points or one point with an overkill on the details. These details become the primary object of the paper, and the central point loses its importance. Envision forests and trees and all that crap.

On the second point, this is a little more tricky to deal with. Let's say you have a paper and the referee disagrees with you fundamentally. Instead of just saying (or in addition to saying) that the paper is complete crap because it disagrees with their line of research, they say that they don't believe this aspect of the method or that aspect of the method or this detail or that detail. This gets you into a battle about (possibly) trivial things that take away from the central theme of the paper. What they are in essence doing is having you focus on the trees instead of the forest. If they get you to focus on the details instead of the central theme, then you lose readers and your effectiveness to communicate.

I imagine that this may not be intentional, since they may be interested in the details, but often times what I think happens is that the reviewer disagrees with the outcome of the study, so they are gunning for anything that they think is "incorrect". If you same something like, "this term is negligible", they will automatically say that it is not negligible and therefore the entire study is flawed. You then get into a debate about how that term is or is not negligible. Very few people probably care about this argument except the reviewer, but in order to satisfy the referee, you have to address it somehow. This can totally derail the review process.

Now, what to do about it? That is a fantastic question. There are a number of strategies, some of which are effective and some of which are not:

1. Keep the argument within the reply to the referee. This allows you to address their specific issues without detracting from the main point of the paper. You can always add a couple of sentences in the paper on these issues, but, unless it adds to the central theme, don't go into gory detail! Go into gory detail in the response only.

2. Deflect their arguments by trivializing them back in the response. Don't even acknowledge the importance of their argument. This is very risky and could easily backfire. Some referees don't ever want to see a paper again after they have reviewed it once, so this strategy works well on them, but often the referee will only get very angry after a casual dismissal. So, use this method rarely.

3. When I was a Post Doc, the guy that I worked for addressed all of the reviewers comments within the paper, then, when it was accepted and going through the copy editing process, he removed a significant amount of the additions. Don't do this.

4. Add some strong sentences in the conclusions about the assumptions that you have made. State them in the methodology section, and then again in the conclusions that that you have acknowledged that there are assumptions and that they could impact the findings. This way, you still have an extremely tight central theme, but you concur that there could be other findings with different assumptions. This pleases the reviewer because it says right at the end of the paper "I could be wrong". They read this part as the most important, but very few other people will. You please everyone.

The main problem with this is thinking rationally once you get the reviews back. Typically, you are just so pissed off that you are seeing red. You want blood. But, you have to set your emotions aside and think about how to effectively respond to the comments. I am not the best example of this. I get overly emotional about my papers and blow a fuse when I get a bad review (on every paper!) I try to put my feelings aside, but I have a very hard time doing it. I will try harder in the future.

Ok, I have to go and help Crab Mama put rocks around the fish pond....

Picnic Euphoria

2009-08-20T21:42:00.000-04:00

Tonight we had a picnic for work. It was a blast. Tomorrow we have a picnic for my wife's work. Both at the same place. How many hamburgers and hot dogs can one person eat???

Yesterday I spent the day reading my student's paper. Today I spent the day reading another student's paper. Tomorrow I have to read a former student's paper. It is really, really, really long too. One of his problems had been writing way too much. Now I have to help cut his 100+ page paper down to something manageable. Boy oh boy, am I going to have a fun day.

Hear is another piece of news. I started drinking Diet Mt. Dew. Holy crappoly. I first started drinking Mt. Dew Throwback, which is a sugar version of Mt. Dew, instead of corn syrup. This took the sweetness down a fair bit (although not the calories). Once I got used to that, going to Diet was easy. Now, let the pounds drip off!

Blueberries of Love

2009-08-17T22:09:00.000-04:00

My sister asks us to come blueberry picking with her. We say sure, we will call you. We don't. Then, the wife decides that we should go blueberry picking on Sunday morning. We invite our neighbor to go with us, since she was at home alone with her son. After we get there and pick berries for an hour, we pay and get ready to leave. Well, who should show up? My sister!

I am sorry!

Again!

I am such a bad brother! I am a total sh*t!

But, I must say that the blueberries are so freaking good. I mean, really good.

Done!

2009-08-10T21:55:00.001-04:00

NSF MRI proposal is done! Hopefully it will review well and I will get a couple of million dollars to build some instruments!

After I turned in my proposal, I got to spend a few minutes cleaning my office, which is fantastic! I haven't cleaned my office in months.

Tonight the kids had a Lego competition. They each made something sort of ... less than spectacular. We were all pretty impressed with the winning "sculptures". The kids are super-motivated to build something for next year. They are going to build a bridge that is being attacked by a monster shooting lasers out of its eyes. People will be jumping off the bridge and at least one person will be chopped in half by laser eyes. Sweet. Those are MY kids!

Fish Ponds and Dog Farts

2009-08-02T17:35:00.000-04:00

It is August already. Crap. Where did the summer go? I was supposed to accomplish so much, and yet, I don't feel like I have accomplished much at all. In a month, I will have to start teaching again, and will be drowning in class.

But, let's just focus on the now.

Or the past week.

Some interesting things that have happened lately:

1. I got a tattoo:

Why? Good question. Maybe I should address this in a separate blog post.

2. We are making a fish pond in the yard. That is a lot of fun - the kids are going crazy working on it. We have basically finished the majority of it - we have the hole dug, the liner in, rocks around the outside of it, and have filled it with water. We would have put fish in it today, but it is pouring rain.

3. The kids went to Grandma's house last week. They were gone from Sunday to Friday. They had a great time. She took them to an amusement park, which we have never done before. So, they were extremely happy about the whole thing. We went and saw one movie. We should have gone to more movies, and gone out to dinner more, but we worked a lot and then had to come home relatively early, because...

4. We are watching someone's dog. So we have 3 dogs right now. 3. Dogs. And it is raining, so they are all covered with mud. And the visiting dog doesn't agree with the dog food that we have, so she has gas. Holy Crap is that some nasty-*ss-sh*t. And then she crapped in her crate the other day while we were at work. That is nice. Welcome home. I feel sorry for the dog. But, because I am terribly insensitive, I just want the dog to be done. I don't really care how. Gone. We have 4 more days of dog farts.

5. I am working on a huge proposal. There are major issues to deal with here, which I won't go into here. It is a painful process, since I basically have no admin support for the proposal, so I have to do EVERYTHING for it. Luckily it is a FastLane proposal, so you can sort of see what you need to do. I just have about 15 Supplemental Documents to upload, and am not sure whether I should include others or not. And I have to finish writing the proposal. And the place that I am submitting it from hasn't even gotten me their budget. And it is due on Monday. Nice.

6. I made up with my 'boss'. One of the reasons that we have so much conflict is that he is not really my boss anymore. We discussed this point and basically both of us agreed that we should act more like adults.

7. I rode my bike to work twice this week. I was hoping that I could ride more, since the kids were gone, but life got a little out of hand.

8. We launched a balloon on Thursday. It carried an actual scientific instrument, which was the whole point of all of the balloon launches that we have been doing lately - working up to carrying an expensive piece of equipment. It was a great launch, and pretty much the best landing that you could hope for. We saw it land. I think that someone got it on video, so, when they post this, I will make a link. The balloon missed a large cluster of large lakes by a very small margin. It was very close, and we were all a little nervous. After trying to ask the farmer for permission to go into his field, and finding that he wasn't home, a few students went out into the field to get it. After recovering the balloon, the farmer showed up and was a little angry that we trespassed onto his property. Words were exchanged - actually he yelled at me a fair bit and I just tried not to give not-to-smart-ass answers to his derogatory comments. It was fun!

9. My second post doc started work about two weeks ago. My new grad student started last Monday. My old grad student is defending in a week. My other grad student got back from China last week after being there for about 4-5 weeks. So, now we are all there. I have to figure out how I am going to manage all of these people and still get work done myself. This is the key - I have to admit that I won't get any work done on my own any more. Managing people is becoming the largest percentage of my time.

10. I am going to take a shower now. It is about 3:00 in the afternoon and I haven't taken a shower yet. I stink. And my tattoo itches. But I am not allowed to scratch it.....!!!

10 ten simple activities i love

2009-07-24T20:35:00.000-04:00

Bryan started it. So, here is my contribution:

10. Drinking Mt. Dew.
09. Reading a book.
08. Walking through the back door, after getting home.
07. Reading to my kids.
06. An unmentionable act that one does with a spouse. I am not sure that it is "simple", though.
05. Riding my bike.
04. Cooking a good dinner. Eating a good dinner. Eating dessert. Eating. In general.
03. Watching really funny TV shows (Arrested Development, 30 Rock, etc.)
02. Listening to music.
01. Coding. Creating something from nothing.

Obviously, I screwed up the order. Drinking Mt. Dew is #1 after I dew #5. #2 is #1 almost all of the time, but can be done with all other things. #3 should not be done with #6. Not a good idea. #6 and #5 don't mix either. Tried that. Didn't work. #8 sometimes changes from #1 to off the list when I hear the screaming and yelling going on. It can also change from off the list to #1, when everyone rushes up to me with open arms screaming "Daddy!"

I work for an ss Hle

2009-07-24T09:45:00.000-04:00

I got into an argument with my boss about a trip that he wanted me to take. At first, when he stated that he wanted everyone in the group to go on this trip, I protested. He didn't listen. Then he told us that one of the other members of the group would just go for one day, while the rest of us are going for five days. I didn't say anything at this point.

This trip was basically to support our large code(s). He wanted us to go and work with a group that I have been working with a lot over the last few years. I have been extremely supportive of this group and have been doing code modifications for them a lot over the last 6 months.

At a meeting about 2 weeks ago, he went around the table asking people when they were going. I said that I wasn't going because I have been traveling way too much, and that I would support the meeting over the phone. The room went dead silent. Eventually, it passed and the person who was going for a day said when he was going. I volunteered that I could possibly go for a day also.

But, that day came, and I didn't go. I didn't tell him that I wasn't going. I didn't talk to him at all about the trip before the trip. He didn't ask. I didn't volunteer. So, he called me when he got off the airplane to ask me where I was. I was in my office. He blew up. I blew up more. I yelled at him about how he doesn't listen to me when I talk to him, so there was no point in actually talking to him. I told him that I didn't want to go, expressed this to him, and he didn't listen. He said that I obviously didn't think that the people and the relationship with the people he was visiting was important. That is when I exploded. I yelled that I had supported the people more than anyone else in the group. That I spend days and days writing code and testing and doing all sorts of crap for them, while no one else in the group had done this. (There is one other member of our group who has probably done as much work as I have, I should say...)

Eventually he said, something like "I guess there is nothing else to say." I said "I guess so." and we hung up.

About an hour later I was on the telecon talking to the people about the code problems. I help resolve some issues and I think that we made the code much more stable. Without me being there. I did a bunch of runs at work and contributed to the meeting.

So, today (three days later), I get this e-mail:

[Crab],

Your membership in `group-CORE' has been suspended. You are still a member of
the `group-ALL' group.

If you wish to discuss this please make an appointment with my assistant. I will
not respond to email about this matter.

[Your boss]

Nice. I am punished.

Lance in Third

2009-07-23T20:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Lance dropped to forth place, but today he climbed back up to the podium. He has one more incredibly difficult stage to go, but I am confident that he can keep third!

Let's cross our fingers!

Some Kick-*ss Balloon Footage

2009-07-21T14:44:00.000-04:00

Click here to see some really freaking cool video of our last balloon flight.

If you get tired of watching, fast forward to about 2:45, and watch for the next few seconds. It is crazy!

No! Lance! No!

2009-07-20T22:08:00.000-04:00

Lance all but gave up yesterday. He didn't climb as well as he used to and basically stated that Contador was a much better climber. He also said that there is no way he will win at this point.

No! No! No!

Oh God!

No!

Don't do it Lance! Don't give up. You only have to believe harder! If you want it bad enough, your legs will be stronger in the mountains! You only have to believe!

Or... as some believe... is it only a deception, and he will come back on the last day, and whip everyone's *ss? Yes. That must be it! He is just holding back a few days. Just waiting for the perfect time to win! That must be it!

(Oh God Lance! That's it, right????)

New Bike!

2009-07-19T21:06:00.000-04:00

I got a new bike yesterday:

It is a Felt X-City with a Shimano 8-speed internal gear hub. This is so that the maintenance is minimized. The wheels are road bike sized wheels. It has an aluminum frame too. So, it is like a road bike, but has fatter tires and more of a mt. bike geometry. It should be a good commuter bike.

I rode 16 miles this morning and then Crab Boy and I rode to the lake, which is 4 miles away. He splashed around a bit, and then we rode home. So, 24 miles in a day.

First real mountain stage today. It is exciting!

I'm Sorry Mom

2009-07-18T09:17:00.000-04:00

A lot of people tell me that my son is exactly the same that I am.

This morning, he wakes me up, and we go down stairs to eat breakfast and stuff. It has been about an hour now, and he hasn't stopped talking to actually breathe yet. I am waiting for him to pass out from lack of Oxygen. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk.

He is now talking to me about how we can wash our hands in the water behind the dam that he is going to build in the water run off thing by the side of the house. And there are going to be rocks in it. And it will last forever.....

If I was like Crab Boy, I am sorry mom. Truly sorry.

In the Grips of the Tour

2009-07-14T21:03:00.000-04:00

I have tour-mania. If you don't know what I am talking about, then you are obvious a football loving American.

Will Armstrong win again? He is in 3rd place right now, only down 8 seconds from the leader. Very exciting stuff! It is quite funny listening to him talk now, since he seems to be much more relaxed about stuff and jokes about how serious everyone else is. He makes comments about how old he is. It is a little more refreshing. Lance said in an interview before the race, something like "look, there will be a break away. The Peleton will pull them back. Cavendish will win, since it is a flat stage."

Paul Sherwin just said "completely and utterly", which is his saying. Every year. Every day. Completely and Utterly.

Cavendish wins again! Surprise!

The thing that I hate about the tour this year, is that many (many!) of the mountain stages end with a long downhill section. This means that if you beat a bunch of bastards up the hill, they can catch up on the way down the mountain. This means that riders are very hesitant about exerting a lot of energy on the way up, when other people can just catch up to you. So, there is no real race there. It is very sad! Two monster stages last week ended up being completely blah because of this. Oh well.

At Grammy's

2009-07-06T21:37:00.000-04:00

Well, we survived Chicago. I gave a talk at the Adler Planetarium. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry, Field Museum, the top of the Sear's Tower, and the Aquarium. Quite a weekend.

It was a wonderful, family filled weekend in which we really had nothing important to do. Very nice.

Tomorrow we are going to go to the beach and spend a few hours just playing. We then have to drive home and get back to reality. Wednesday, work and dogs!

A Fish Out of Water

2009-07-03T22:50:00.000-04:00

Today we are in Chicago to see the fireworks. I have to give a presentation on Monday, so we thought we would come to Chicago a few days early to see the fireworks, which are raved about. We booked ourselves into a relatively fancy hotel (thank goodness for membership cards and AAA!). The parking is valet only and is about $45/day. So, we abandoned the car in South Chicago and took the train. It was definitely an interesting experience. Not bad, but interesting.

When we got to the hotel, we got a room and then went out to watch the fireworks, since it was about 9:00 at night, which is what time the guy at the front desk said they would start. We got to the park as they were starting.

The "Taste of Chicago" is going on at the same time, so the park was full of booths and lights and stuff. We started to walk into the park, and I got bumped by a cop who was manhandling someone in handcuffs out of the park. Nice. About this time, I think we realized we were in a very different place than our normal firework viewing location. The people around us we not hillbillies. They were more of the inner city type of folk.

While we were standing there, with thousands of others watching the fireworks, some people started running out of the park. It was like a bomb had gone off and everyone was panic running. We stepped behind a barricade thing and just stood there watching the fireworks while people ran like crazy for about 10 seconds. And then, everyone calmed down and it was over. Very, very strange.

Next a little golf cart dealy with a stretcher came racing from the entrance, horn blaring. Everyone moved out of the way to let them through. Another little vehicle came through with more police on board. It was all just a little surreal.

We moved a little bit away from the rest of the people, down an isle of trees, so we could see a little better and get out of the main stream of things.

Then, the fireworks ended. Just like that. Well, there was a nice ending, but it was all of a sudden.

There was a little kid standing in front of Crab Boy with a little light saber. He was waving at him, basically saying "Look what I have!" Once the fireworks ended, his big brother took the light saber away from him, broke it in half and threw it on the ground. Then proceeded to smack him on the butt a few times because he was crying his head off. Nice. Once we got far away from them, Crab Boy asked us what we would do to punish him if he was in our family. I don't really know. It is so foreign, that I just can't really comprehend it. Crab Boy suggested that the older kid have to buy the younger kid a $100 Lego set.

Now we are in our hotel room. In the water.

Next year, we will probably stay at home and watch the fireworks from our normal place near the car wash on the lake, with all of the hillbillies. While we will feel like fish out of water there too, there will be less people and fewer police.

Same Place as Last Week

2009-06-25T21:46:00.001-04:00

I am sitting in the same hotel, one floor up and one room away from the hotel that I was in last week at this exact same moment. Tomorrow I am going to take the same flight home and eat the same breakfast on the airplane. What is this, day 9? I am not looking forward to Sunday, in which I will, once again, leave the kids.

I had about and hour long phone conversation today with Crab Boy, while I was driving through the mountains and into Denver. For the first five minutes or so, all he did was talk baby talk to me. Most of the time, that just bugs me, but today it was cute. Maybe because all I had to do was listen to his baby talk and drive. There were no meetings or people or other crap to deal with. It was nice. He has never talked on the phone for more than about 5 minutes with me before. Today, he talked and talked. Then had to hang up to eat dinner. Then he called back, and he talked more. Then the phone went dead, and I called him back when I got out of the mountains. He is growing up.

I gave a 45 minute talk today at the workshop I was at. It went ok. I was pretty worried about it, since it was, in essence, a non-science talk. My ex-grad student called it a 45 minute advertisement. Which it was - it discussed the history of this code that some people use to do data assimilation and how it has changed and enabled a huge amount of science that could not have been done before. But, I think that people enjoyed it. I joked around a lot. I don't think that anyone fell asleep.

The sad thing is, though, that I have no time off. I have to prepare for my travel next week - I have a talk first thing on Monday. So, I have to do a bunch of crap (crap = model runs) this weekend to prepare.

An update on my Post Doc - he went to Europe a few days ago. He finished the paper that he was supposed to get done before he left. We are unsure of the results of the modeling study, since he got different results than I got (hmmmm....), but the paper is going to be in a non-reviewed conference proceedings, so it doesn't matter too much. We will clear up the model issues when he gets home in a month.

One of my grad students is off to China next week. She is really the work-horse of the group. It is totally unbelievable the things that she can accomplish. We have outlined two papers that she is going to work on (one is almost finished, one has the runs and such done). These will be her 4th and 5th papers that she has written. And she is just finishing her 3rd year. I am pretty ok with her taking a vacation!

Today I did something that I haven't done in a long time - I took some time out of the conference and went for a hike with some of the student (well - some are now ex-students). It is sad that I don't do this more often.

Well, time to relax a bit and work on some more talks!

Happy Birthday!

2009-06-20T14:59:00.000-04:00

Today is Crab Boy's 8th birthday. He currently has 5 friends in the basement screaming and yelling and generally having a good time. We are going to eat cake in a couple of minutes.

We bought Crab Boy a Lego robot for his birthday. It's mainly for me. Let's be honest.

Day 2 of 20 Days of Travel

2009-06-18T22:14:00.000-04:00

Ok, I won't actually be traveling for he full 20 days. I flew to Colorado yesterday, fly home tomorrow. Fly back to CO on Monday morning. Back home on Friday. Santa Fe on Sunday. Back on Thursday. Chicago (with the family!) on July 4th/5th. Back on the 8th - don't even know what day that is. Then, my boss wants me to go to Washington DC for a week starting something like the 20th. Yeah, right.

Life is very interesting. I just read my friends blog. I would have to say that his job is 100% the same as mine, but yet he reports that he loves his job, while I, I am sad to say, don't. It makes me think about what it is about myself or about my job that is.... different.

Many of the things about our job that he lists that he likes, I like too. For example, teaching students, doing research, etc. I like doing all of those things. I seem to concentrate my thoughts on all of the things that (most likely) just fall off his shoulders. For example, meetings all of the time, mundane paperwork, letters of support, travel, and ... I have to imagine that he gets so much more joy out of the more fun bits of his job, that these don't bother him, while I, on the other hand, tend to concentrate on these aspects of my job, and make it so I want to scream.

I could imagine a therapist saying something like "When you truly love someone, and they fill you with happiness, then their flaws just don't matter at all. But, when you are not filled with happiness, then it is easy to get sucked down into thinking about the flaws of the other person all of the time." Not that I have ever heard anyone say this type of thing... just imagining is all I am doing.

I think that this is true of my job also. I need to figure out how I can fill my black heart up with love for my job, so I won't get caught up in all of the crap that I have to do. I do admit that there are aspects of my job that I absolutely love.

One of my (many) problems that I have, if you have not figured this out, is that I tend to spread myself too thin. I am like the guy in a game of Risk who thinks he can take Asia and hold it. You just can't hold Asia. And it is ok to not hold Asia. Why not settle for Australia or South America. These are nice little continents that give you some armies, but don't tax your resources. I need to accept that life would be better to just hold Australia and not Asia.

For travel, I imagine that one of the reasons that I hate travel is that I have this PERCEPTION that my family is basically miserable without me, and that it is my fault. I also am a homebody. These two things make traveling sort of miserable for me. I have to work on saying "yes, I am leaving my family, but they will be fine without me, so I might as well enjoy myself." If I don't enjoy myself, is it making their lives any better? By making myself unhappy, does it make my wife more happy? While this is true at home, where she can witness me being miserable, it doesn't work while I am out of her sight.

Ah well. That is enough for on night in a hotel in Denver.

Singing the Post Doc Blues

2009-06-16T21:12:00.000-04:00

Today I rode my bike again. You will think that I actually ride my bike often, if I keep this up!

But, I can't, since tomorrow I am off to somewhere in Colorado for a 5 hour meeting. Then back for the weekend, then off to Colorado again for 5 days, then back for the weekend, then off to New Mexico for 4 days. Ahhh, travel - how I have missed you in the last 3 weeks!

Yesterday I had an interesting day re my Post Doc. A couple of months ago, we decided on a project for him, which was basically to take someone else's model results as the lower boundary of our code. We started by downloading a very large data file and extracting what we needed from it (I wrote a bunch of code to extract some of the data, then he finished it off by extracting all of the data). He then modified the code to read in the data files that we created and use them for a bottom BC.

Now, take this next part with a grain of salt, since he has never used the model, and I wrote the model from scratch.

He came to me stating that he had finished it, and wanted to do some runs to show how the result changed and do some physics. I wanted to see results right away. He said I should wait, since he had a bunch of runs to do and wanted to look at the results. I agreed. Well, it turns out that all of the results were bad. I am not blaming him at all, since we all make mistakes. You just have to recognize the possibility of mistakes and show your work to someone who has actually used the model...

So, yesterday, while he search for the bug, I took his code and rewrote it from scratch (using his as a guideline for what to do). It took me about 2 hours to code it and test it, verifying that it worked perfectly. It took him over a month to do this.

Once again, I wrote the damn code, and I used his code as a template. But over a month versus two hours. This frustrates me a little bit. It would be great if he could have done it a little faster, since this was his only project during the time and we have a pretty hard deadline (presenting model results on Thursday...)

BUT - we got it done. The model now has a more dynamic lower boundary. We can probably publish at least three papers showing simple results from this, which is just fantastic.

Interestingly, he is going back to Europe for a conference, where he will present this research also. Then he is off to go back to his school, visit his family, and do other things. So, I won't actually see him for the next 4-5 weeks. Well, we had discussed that he HAD to finish this before he left. And he has. With some help. And just in the nick of time.

My second Post Doc arrives in July. Man, this year is going to be fun!

Sunday Sunday

2009-06-14T17:06:00.000-04:00

Today I slept in until 9:15, woke up, ate breakfast, took a shower, and went to see Star Trek by myself. This is the first time I have gone to a movie by myself in a very long time. When I got home, I cleaned all four bathrooms (yes four!), folded a bunch of clothes, and started more laundry. We then went and trained the dogs on the new buried fence. Lilly sure can jump when she is electrocuted!

For the last two weeks, Lilly has discovered that she can run much faster than we can. When she escapes from us, all she has to do is head into the woods and she is home free. She is forced to take a shower when she returns an hour later, but that seems to be worth it for her.

Well, no more. She is wearing the new shock collar right now (so is Heidi). We took them around the perimeter today with the collar on for the first time just a little while ago. Lilly got zapped a few times. Hopefully, she learned that she had to run towards the yard when the zap happens.

On to Star Trek. I enjoyed the movie very much, but kept getting hung up on the fact that all of the crew ended up being in place by about 3/4 of the way through the movie. This makes sense for continuity with the TV series and such, but it makes no real sense in a military outfit. Everyone on board the Enterprise was so great in getting to their current position, but then failed miserably at every getting a promotion again (until some movie, in which they decided to promote people - I can't remember which one - after something like 20 years in the same position). If you set aside this fact, and many other coincidences within the movie, it was a very good action flick. It made me want to go out and rent The Wrath of Khan (or Khan Strikes Back in Star Wars lingo).

Ok, the wife informs me that I should call our friends who are going to come and pick up their daughter and invite them to dinner. I guess that means that I need to shut up.

A Good Day

2009-06-11T21:31:00.000-04:00

Today I rode my bike to work. 14 miles there and 14 miles back. It rained all the way home. That sort of sucked, but it wasn't that bad. I think that riding my bike gets me all energized and pumped, giving me energy to do my wonderful job!

I also have been huddling in a room with another person every Thursday morning and writing. We have committed to writing during this time every week. So, last week I wrote proposal stuff. This week I actually worked on a paper! Holy crap! Paper? Yes! I made a few figures and started working on the paper, which I started about a year ago.

I did have a conversation with one of my students about what she wants to do with the rest of her life and more specifically about what she wants to do in the next year before she finishes. This was an interesting conversation. My student is extremely talented in just about everything that she does, but she doesn't really seem to like to do science. Science is extremely hard. It involves realizing that the solution is not straight forward. That may be a trivial thing to say, but it is hard to take. In everything that everyone does throughout school, there is a solution. It may be extremely hard to get to that solution, but there is a solution. With science, there may not be enough data or the simulations may be extremely difficult to figure out. If you hit your head against this wall over and over and over again, when you have never had to hit your head before, it is hard to take. This is a lesson that she will have to learn. It is not an easy lesson. It sucks.

I actually have no real idea how to teach her this. She is obviously smarter than I am and pretty much an equal when it comes to coding and such. How do I then teach her how to think independently and come up with unique solutions? All I basically do is tell her what I would do next. Lead by example. I am not really sure if this is the best way to teach something like this, but I'll give it a go for a while.

My Post Doc is doing pretty well. He has made a bunch of code modifications to a model that I developed and is starting to get some results. One of the problems that we are running into is that the model is slow - most other models that are of this type are simplified so they can run fast. My model is not simplified, so it runs slow. We have optimized the crap out out it, so it runs about 2-3 times faster than it did about 6 months ago, but if you are used to using a model that runs a day in about 4 hours on your desktop and you need 64 processors of a supercomputer to do the same thing, it is a drag. But, he is working on it. We have a pretty hard deadline to get some of the research done. I am going to a meeting next week and he is going to Europe the following week. Both of us have to give presentations on what he is doing. Needless to say, it is put up or shut up time. He is confident in the put up, so tomorrow he has to show me results. Should be another good day, eh?

Then one of the undergrads that is working for me finished one of the steps in a 100,000 step process. He didn't really know how to program before he started work 5 weeks ago. He learned Fortran90 and a bit of IDL, then played with C to reproduce what he did in Fortran. Next he has to learn how to program in CUDA, which is NVIDIA's parallel programming language. Did you know that your video card in your computer is like a little super computer? Why do you think that you can play Quake so well (ok, I don't know what the latest 3D games are... 3D Pac-Man? Actually, Halo 3 would be my best bet...) So, you can program your video card to do a bunch of really, really simple math very, very quickly. The key is to figure out how to do it. My undergrad is going to figure it out. Hopefully. Well, enough that I or someone else can take what he did and figure it out.

When I got home, the wife had dinner ready. It was soup and bread, which is good, since we tend to over eat a LOT, so having a light meal is great a couple days a week. I got to read to the kids for about 30 minutes (over half way through Eragon now - he's in jail! What's going to happen???? Tune in tomorrow, unless Crab Boy has a sleep over, in which case, tune in Saturday.)

And now I am blogging. A couple days in a row. Wow!

Ahhh... I was also going to start putting in lyrics to songs that have some meaning to me. Like the other day's Gun's and Roses lyrics. But different.

Let's play name this song....

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

Ok, that is probably pretty obvious. But, there it is. Maybe I will make it harder and harder and harder, so only Rico can answer!

gnr

2009-06-09T10:24:00.000-04:00

I get up around 7
get out of bed around 9
i don't worry about nothin', no
cuz worrying's a waste of my time

todo

2009-06-08T21:10:00.000-04:00

I feel like my brain has turned to mush - at work and at home.

At work I have made a gigantic todo list, and have been slowly plowing through the list. Very slowly. I am in so many meetings and have so many students working for me, that I can't actually get any work done at all. I guess this is what a manager does, eh? People get work done for me. I tell them to do something, and they do it. Move on to the next person.

I am a person who likes to actually do stuff, though. I hate the fact that I can't take the time to actually build a payload for the balloons. Or that I make my student rewrite her code because it runs out of memory for me when I run it on a problem that she didn't test it on. I can do this stuff - I just don't have time to do it.

So, when I am sitting at my desk, thinking that I would like to program or do something "useful", I have to look down at my todo list and force myself to do something on the list. I really don't like working like that, but this is what it has come down to. Maybe when my 3 weeks of travel starting next week is over, I will be able to breathe a sigh of relief and do some stuff.

One very nice thing that I have started to to actually set aside Thursday mornings to write. For the last two weeks I have been working on my big proposal. This Thursday, I will probably work on a paper. I have not written a paper in a long time. I have been forcing my students to do it, while I have not. I really hate writing papers. But, I should probably lead by example.

On a completely different note, I have to say that Nina Totenberg kicks ass. She did a story last week on Sotomayor which was a one-two punch to the right-wing pundits out there who are calling Sotomayor biased. It was great. It basically said that she is pretty impartial in racial cases, having fallen on both sides of the issue, while also saying that she doesn't believe that the courts make policy. Here is her last sentence - "The treaty's language is clear and it is not for the courts to make policy, she said, adding that if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it." I just laughed at this, because it was such a subtle jab to republicans that have been saying she has said that the courts make policy. Nina Kicks It!

Proposal Time

2009-05-30T12:10:00.000-04:00

I am working on a major proposal for NSF. If I get this proposal, it will basically change my life. Normally, I work on modeling and that is about it. I have a couple of students and a post doc who do nothing but modeling and data analysis work. It is a good life. But, I really like doing hands-on type of stuff. For example, I did a huge amount of the work on our new house. Modeling is fun to me because it involves writing code and building stuff (not real stuff, but fake, codey stuff).

This new proposal will be to build a bunch of actual, real, stuff. And then deploy that stuff all over the United States and Canada. It is a big proposal. And somewhat important, since it could be life-changing, as alluded to above. Why would it be life-changing? Because it is building so many of these things that it will basically force me to do this 100% of my time for the next 3 years. Then, when the stations are all built and deployed, I will have to do science with the data and manage the operations and the data flow and all sorts of other aspects of them, implying that I will have significantly less time to actually do the modeling. Since I have a lot of grants to do the modeling, I will have get more students to do the modeling and such.

Life could be very different.

One thing that I am finding, while coming up with a management plan, is that I will be doing a lot of driving over the next three years. The furthest station is about 300 miles north of Edmonton, Canada (Fort Smith - 2,755 miles away from Ann Arbor!) The closest station is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I have to figure out how to deploy 18 stations all over North America in 3 years, with each taking about a week. This is going to be an adventure!

The first hurtle of this proposal is that I have to get it through the university. We are only allowed to submit three proposals from each university, so they have to judge which ones are the most likely to be funded, and which will benefit the university the most, etc. It is going to be harder to get through the universities filter than through the NSF filter, since there will probably be 20-30 proposals submitted to the university, while they have to pick three (a success rate of about 10%-17%), while NSF is expected to fund about 40% of those submitted. (Yeah stimulus money!)

Ok, back to work on the proposal.

My Weekend

2009-05-27T21:05:00.000-04:00

I finished the talks. I don't think that either one was that great, but, they existed. There was no standing ovation.

I talked to a lot of people out at the Air Force Research Lab. They are working on some pretty interesting things. I am actually quite biased against scientists who work in labs like this, since I see them as basically not contributing to science hardly at all. It seems like many of them get jobs, then are beaten down by the government regulations or whatever, and end up just in in-office retirement.

For example, I was trying to give the person who invited me to come and give the talk my power point presentation. He asked me to mail it to him. I couldn't, since I have movies and stuff that are larger than the 50 MB that our mail server can handle. (Note - don't send 50 MB mail attachments. They really suck down your mail program.) I then suggested a USB thumb drive. No - the government won't let them put USB drives in their computers. (What???) Next, put it on a web page. Well, I can't actually connect to the internet because my computer may explode the Air Force base (or something). So the solution we came up with (he came up with - having gone through this once or twice before) was for me to burn a CD with my talk on it. Then he takes the CD and puts it in his computer and copies it to his hard drive. We then throw away the CD, which fulfilled its destiny in 30 second.

Ah, viruses. I think that the terrorists have won this battle.

Imagine living everyday with this type of logic at work in your life.

"Can I do this?"

"No!"

"Why?"

"Because we have determined that if you do that, something bad could happen and that would be bad."

"But, by not allowing me and everyone else working for the US government to not do it, you are cause untold amount of lost time and inefficiency."

"Yes, but if we get a virus, we could be down for a day."

"But, if you add up all of the time that is wasted to circumvent this illogical madness, it is MUCH longer than the down time if the worst probable thing happened."

"Follow the rules."

"But..."

"Follow the rules!"

I think that after a few years of this crap, I would probably join the in-office retirement community of our great nation.

Moving on.

For my talk in Boston, there were a bunch of people out of town. It was a real shame, since there are a large number of people there that I would like to talk to. This was all caused by my moving the day that I was supposed to come and give a talk from the middle of April (during classes) to the middle of May (during summer). I was traveling too much, so I asked if I could move it, and they agreed. But, many people were out of town and a significant amount of the discussion that I could have had with people was cut. Oh well, such is life.

I then climbed on an airplane and flew to an undisclosed location in a state that begins with the letter P and hopped into the minivan to drive to another state that begins with the letter V. The wife and kids and dogs all met me at the airport (she arrived within 15 minutes of my flight arriving, even though she had to drive 5+ hours to get there - how is that for timing?) This all happened at 11 PM. We had to find a hotel that would take dogs. It turns out that in the great state of P, it is difficult to find a hotel that (a) takes dogs or (b) is not completely booked by Halliburton workers. Seriously, the entire Comfort Inn was taken over by Halliburton workers. It was a little scary. We finally found a hotel after asking 11 of them if they let dogs stay. It was crappy, but I had spent the previous night in a bed and breakfast in downtown Boston (I would have to say at least $250/night) and the night before that in a Marriott (about the same price), so pretty much anything would look like a Hell Hole. Hey, there was only one bug that I saw, and it was in the bathroom, so it wasn't all bad.

In the AM, we slogged into a Bob Evan's and ate some good old food for breakfast. I realized, once again, why we never go out for breakfast. Crab Girl eats about 438,625 pieces of french toast. At home this isn't too prices (just ~20,000 loaves of bread), while at a restaurant, it is about $2/piece, which ends up being a fair bit. And it doesn't come with eggs, so you have to order that extra. And juice costs $5/ounce. So, a breakfast that would have cost you about $5-$10 at home costs about $35-$40 at Bob's. Oh well. After we left, I vowed to get a hot plate, a skillet and some pancake mix.

Am I a bitter old man or what?

We decided to take the shorter, yet more scenic route to Aunt Crabby #4's house. This meant traveling through the mountains on a two-lane road. It must have been the breakfast, because I almost hurled. Up and down and round and round. I was even driving. It seems like the mountains in Colorado were up and up and up and then down and down and down. These were up and down and up and down and up and down and ... Ralph. Oh sorry.

We arrived at Aunt Crabby's house where we had a doggy love fest - four dogs in < 1000 square feet. It was all dog, all the time. It is funny, because I remember one of Aunt Crabby's dogs being very big, but compared to Lilly, he was tiny. Lilly is now a gigantic moron dog (not just a little moron dog!)

Aunt Crabby put us all to work on little gifts for all of the attendees of the wedding. They were very well thought out and nice gifts. She spent a lot of time and energy making things that she thought people would really like. So, we helped finish some stuff up and put bows and stuff and other things.

The next day we got to do more running around and going to rehearsals and going to rehearsal party and such. Fun times. I really wasn't involved at all, but Crab Mama was the Maid of Honor, while Crab Girl was the Junior Maid of Honor, and Crab Boy was a flower boy or something (he got to throw flowers while looking embarrassed). We met up with Grandpa and Grandma (divorced, one remarried, the other bitter... awkward!) at the party, and hung out for a while.

It was quite humorous, since people put a movie on for the kids to watch, and after about 30 minutes, the groom and the best man made their way over to the couch and sat and watched the movie, while the rest of the people talked. It was at the groom's house, and 75% of the people their were his family. I should have been the one on the couch! I have no relationship with these people at all (well, ok, I married in the deranged family, but you get the point) and HE is the one sitting there watching the stupid kid's movie, while I talk up the wife's father. Grrrr....

The next day was the wedding, which didn't start until 6:30. So, we had the day to kill. I took the kids to see "Night at the Museum 2" (sucks monkey balls). And arrived back to a freaked out bride. I am not really sure why she was freaked out, but, after a little bit, she calmed down and she and Crab Mama packed up and left for the wedding place. I took Crab Girl to the store to print some pictures for Crab Auntie, while Crab Boy stayed with Grandma. We ended up getting prints and then going to Bed, Bath and Beyond, since I realized that we hadn't actually bought them a present yet (oops!) Then, it was off to the wedding!

It was a very small wedding. I actually felt much better about our wedding, since we had a ton of friends there, while Crab Aunt didn't have many friends there at all. Considering that it was he second wedding and she is about 10 years older than we were when we got married, maybe it is to be expected. The reception was fun. We danced a fair bit. I know that there is some crazy video of me dancing to Come On Eileen, which was the fastest/most modern song the DJ played. Since I now have tenure, I don't have to worry about these types of things anymore (right?)

We drove home on Monday. It was a very nice day for driving. I drove like a bat out of Hades through V, WV, and P. As soon as we got into O, Crab Mama took over and there were Police Officers EVERYWHERE. We didn't see any until this time, but once she took over, they were spaced about every 10 miles on the interstate. She drives much ... better ... than I do, so there was nothing to worry about.

Never, ever, get a burrito from anyplace associated with Hardee's.

It took us about 10 hours to finally make it home. Home Sweet Home.

My next trip is in three weeks. I don't know whether to be happy that I have three weeks, or to be frustrated that I only have three weeks.

Bed time!

Why is my life so overwhelming?

2009-05-20T07:41:00.001-04:00

Because I volunteer to give two hour-long seminars in two days in a different city just a few days before Crab-Mama's sister is getting married.

Oh.

Yeah.

Well, at least I finished the talk that I am giving today last night. Now I just really need to start the talk that I am giving tomorrow. Can anyone spell stuped ideit?

A Very Sad Movie

2009-05-18T21:08:00.000-04:00

If you are really feeling very depressed, watch "Seven Pounds" with Will Smith. It broke my heart.

Really, you have to see this movie. It is terribly depressing, but such an incredibly good movie.

The other movie I saw this weekend, was not. "Space Balls". The kids loved it. I guess I loved it when I was about their age also. The movie could have been better if there was no swearing. It is amazing how you watch a movie in a completely different way when is a 6 year old, a 7 year old and an 11 year old in the room. The sad thing is that the swearing wasn't even necessary.

Necessary was on my daughter's spelling list. She spelled it right. I thought, if she can spell necessary (which I can't even spell), then she must be doing ok.

But seriously, watch "Seven Pounds".

Right after listening to "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab for Cutie.

You won't be sorry.

Tenure!

2009-05-16T22:28:00.000-04:00

Tenure! Tenure! Tenure!

I have Tenure! Official congratulations from president of the university and everything!

Let's start the in-office retirement. Right now!

Who wants to celebrate????

I am going to go crazy! Like, go to bed at 10:30, nut-so-like!

Here I go!

May Already?

2009-05-05T19:45:00.000-04:00

Well, classes have ended. My GSIs graded the final exam, and I turned in final grades. I am done with class! I have to say that I was too generous with the students. When someone comes to you and says that they are basically an idiot and can you have mercy on their soul (i.e., don't fail them - just give them something higher than a D....), what do you say? Laugh at them and say "NO! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

I really thought that life would slow down a bit after class ended, but so far, not so much.

I went to Boulder on Wednesday night of last week. Was there all day Thursday, then flew back to MI on Friday. I gave a talk there and it was well received, which is good. This was a meeting that I go to every year, but it ends up being the same meeting every year, with the same speakers saying the same thing. It is a very political meeting, but very little science is done there. The only real reason that I go is to (a) do political stuff, (b) see people that I haven't seen in a couple of months, and (c) get away from the office, so I can actually do some work. Typically, in order to get some work done, I need to be gone for more that 1 day, so the meeting this year did not accomplish that. But, I got to talk to some people that I don't get to talk to very often, which was good.

Over the weekend we went kayaking, which was nice. There were issues with kids wanting to do their own kayak, but not having enough muscle power to actually paddle against the wind. Crab Boy did a lot of "Let me do it on my own!" complaining, and we tried to be patient, while Crab Girl was going all over the place with her kayak. We made a few mistakes, that we will be able to compensate for next time. For example, Crab Mama and I went in a single kayak. It would have been better to go in separate kayaks, with one of us chasing after Crab Girl and the other one taking a nap near Crab Boy. Then, rope would have been nice. So, when Crab Boy gave up the ghost, we could have just dragged him back to shore. We ended up swapping him for Crab Mama about 1/2 way through the event. Live and learn. Overall, I would say that it was a beautiful day. It wasn't too hot or too cold. We had a relatively good time paddling around the lake for a while. No one was drowned. Positive.

Early this week, I don't remember what I did..... Ahhh... I made a todo list and tried to accomplish things on the list. That is basically my life now - make a list and cross stuff off it. It almost doesn't matter what it is, just do it. Write a letter of support. Done. Get Y to install Wiki software so other people can start doing web page management. Done. Start runs on machine Z. Done. Blah Blah Blah.

Now I am in New Jersey sitting in an airport waiting to go home. I went to this meeting on Wednesday afternoon. I wanted to go a little early, so I could go to New York, but the plane was delayed and we got in a couple of hours late. I am also a lazy sack of crap, so I just walked to a restaurant and had a very crappy dinner in Newark. I had a talk to give on Thursday, so I should have been working on it. I didn't. I worked on crossing more stuff off my list. Respond to e-mail P. Send an e-mail to person Q. Blah Blah Blah. On Thursday I went to the meeting. It was interesting, but I really don't have any idea whether it was actually worth coming to. I spent about 20 minutes putting together a talk from talks that I have given in the last couple of months. It was a fine talk. Lots of questions with interest (as opposed to hostile questions). We went out to dinner as a group, which means that we spent 3 hours there. I am a relatively social person, so this is sort of ok, except that you start to feel like you need to call home and talk to the kids and such. It is hard to do this while being at a restaurant with 25 people who you marginally know.

One of my main problems that I have while at meetings is that I feel like I am always the wet blanket. I don't do a lot of hanging around with people until 3 AM, only to be bright and chipper at 8 AM. I have to say that if don't get something like 7-8 hours of sleep, I am a real dick. I also like to have a few minutes by myself before I go to bed, to read and just be. So, I think that a lot of people at meetings don't think that I like them, because I don't go to the bar and stay out late. There were a couple people at this meeting who I think really thought that I didn't like them because of this. So, I sat with them at dinner. I feel like we are all pretty ok friends now. But, I didn't go out to the bar with them later. Oh well.

When we had to buy tickets for the meeting that I am at, we didn't know what the schedule was. So, I got a flight home at 5:30, assuming that the meeting would take most of today. Well, when the schedule came out, I say that it pretty much ended at 11:00. But, instead of changing my flight, I just decided to go standby. Last night NWA wouldn't let me get on the standby list. So, when I got to the airport at 11:30, I got on standby for a 12:30 flight. There were basically no seats available. But, someone didn't show up, so I got the last seat. I went on board, and found my seat, but there was a kid sitting there. Hmmm... We it turns out that the parents didn't get the kid's boarding pass scanned. So, she was on board, and not delayed somewhere. So, I got off the airplane. I called NWA and asked them if there was another flight that I could get on, instead of sitting here for 5 hours. The person said, "what do you mean earlier flight. You are on the flight that is departing right now." I told her, that I obviously wasn't on board that flight, since I was looking out the window at the airplane pulling away right now. I explained what happened. She said that I was confirmed on that flight and that I would probably have to pay a change fee to get on the original flight. WTF??? She put me on hold. 15 minutes later, she comes on and says that she is going to talk to her supervisor. 5 minutes later, the person at the next gate over calls my name. Huh? So I go over there and she asks me what is going on. I tell her and she tells me to hang up. I do. She gives me my original flight back and puts me on the stand-by list for the earlier flight. 2 minutes. No supervisor. I just don't understand. Maybe they didn't want me to take the survey at the end of my call....

Oh well.

So, here I sit in the Newark NJ airport. Blogging.

Who knows. Maybe I will get more work done at the airport than at work. Stranger things have happened.

Credit

2009-04-28T18:53:00.000-04:00

I have been reading a couple of academic type of blogs lately. One of the blogs is written by a pretty bitter Post Doc, who seems to hate every aspect of life. A comment that she made caught my attention, though - that Post Docs do all of the work and the person in charge takes all of the credit. I wrote a comment on this and she deleted it. Nice. Oh, well. So, I thought I would write some words about it here....

First of all, some people call the boss person the "PI". This means Principal Investigator, which implies that the person has won a grant from someplace and is in charge of that grant. They hire students and Post Docs and research scientists to "do the work", while they sit around and do nothing. Or, I should say, this may be a commonly held belief by the people who are slaving away.

About 10 years ago, when I was a fresh person out of my Ph.D., I felt pretty much the same way. The guy that I worked for was never at work and I had to do everything. He then read over everything that I did and had me do little changes here and there. He didn't care whether those changes were actually simple or whether they made it so I had to redo everything. I didn't ever notice him actually doing anything, so I was pretty bitter about the whole thing.

Interestingly, when I got to my current job, the PI was even more distant than the other guy - in that he didn't order me around very much at all, but, at the same time, he didn't even pretend to do any of the "real work". I didn't seem to mind this at all, since he trusted me to do good work and left me to it. We actually had a few people who were "advisers" on the grants, which seemed to me, meant that they got a month worth of salary and didn't do anything.

So, with these notions in mind, let's talk about credit - when work is done, who should get the credit for this work?

There are a few answers to this:

1. The person who does the actual work. This is most likely the post doc or the graduate student who is in charge of running the model, crunching through data, doing lab experiments, and/or making plots to show the scientific result. Why should they get the credit? Well, they did the work.

2. The person who wrote the proposal to get money to hire the person who does the work. This person is often the person that comes up with the idea for the experiment or simulation or data analysis that is done. Why should this person get the credit? Well, if that person didn't write the proposal or come up with the idea, it would never have been done. In some ways, you can think of this person as being the the main company, while the person who does the work is the "same" as a line worker or a bank teller or ... (I don't actually agree with this analogy, but I can image that people would make it.)

3. Both. The both contribute to the effort. Is it equal? I am not sure. It probably depends on the situation.

One thing that should be kept in mind also, is that the graduate student or post doc is actually in a learning role, while the PI is in an instructional role. Part of their JOB is to guide the person to the next level of development, which includes things like carrying out experiments (though, numerical, laboratory, etc), writing papers, critical thinking, understanding of the level of importance of results, problem solving, etc, for graduate students. For post docs, there is a hope that many of these things are at a pretty advanced stage, but they most likely have never written a proposal before, and may need help thinking of research plans from a beginning stage to a conclusion stage (instead of having someone lay it out for them).

Here is how thing work in my group: I try to allow my students to take responsibility for as much of the science as possible (as much as I feel like they can handle). At first, I give them pretty menial tasks to do, since they don't know how to run the codes that we use or visualize things. I need to get to know what they are capable of doing, so this is a way to accomplish this goal. At the next stage, we talk about the science that they want to do. I suggest things areas and see if they are interested. If they are, then we talk about more specific broader projects for them to work on. If we settle on one of these, I let them "play" with the problem, and help them whenever they need assistance (in interpretation, coding, etc). If they hate the project or we are going towards a dead end, I suggest different things to do. We work back and forth until they have something that is scientifically viable. They then write that up. I edit the crap out of it (literally), then they rewrite. I edit, they rewrite. I edit, the rewrite. Repeat until happy. They are then the first author on the paper, and I am the second author. I also encourage them to present as many talks as possible at meetings. I would rather have them show their face with the research than me show my face.

I feel that this is an extremely fair method of mentoring for students. They gain experience in (a) doing science, (b) writing papers, (c) presenting talks, and (d) figuring out where to go on a project.

I am quite lucky that the university counts student first author papers and PI second author papers as a paper for me. This means that I can spend time helping students with papers and give them authorship, while I also get some credit at the university. In the field, you could argue that it looks like I don't write any papers, but that really isn't true either. People in the field know that you helped to guide the science, and what you really want to convey to the community is that you know how to pick good science topics, and you have a team that is quite capable of producing good results.

Now, what this can appear to look like from both inside and the outside of your research group is that you are not pulling your weight. You don't write very many papers, you don't do much work on the modeling and research, and you end up asking students and post docs for their results, so you can present at meetings (to me, this feels like "stealing" results).

I think that what the people in the group have to know is that you do pull your weight by (a) selling the research - i.e., getting grants to continue the research; (b) selling the group - i.e., presenting at meetings to show that the group is doing really good stuff; and (c) teaching them to do science. I personally feel like, if you are not doing those jobs, then you are not pulling your weight. But, if you are, then you are really doing your job.

So, to graduate students and post docs out there who are amazingly bitter towards their "boss", I would have to say that you should look at all of the things that they are doing and ask yourselves, what would happen to me if they were to disappear. If the answer is nothing, then you may be right to complain. If very bad things would happen, then they are probably doing (at least) some part of their job correctly.

Last Chance Balloon

2009-04-25T17:11:00.000-04:00

I am going to tell you some stories. The stories of four balloons (well, five balloons, as you will find out). I will start with the last and end with the first, since I am in a good mood.

I was in a pretty bad mood for this balloon launch, since we had just had basically three pretty unsuccessful balloon launches. I had a meeting for the undergraduate education committee first thing in the morning (and had to proctor an exam to a student who missed the "make-up" final, but couldn't come to the actual exam...) that went until 10:30. I had sent the team a pretty nasty-gram the night before saying that they better be absolutely ready to go by the time I got there. And they were ready! Well, almost ready. We had to stand around for 25 minutes talking about how ready we were and lots of other crap, until I said "Are you ready?" and everyone went "oh! yeah!" and we jumped into the cars and went.

We drove to Coldwater, MI, where we stopped for gas and food (although no one wanted to go to a restaurant - we just bought crap at the gas station - sort of crazy...) I got some Combos and a Mt. Dew (hey - they now have Mt. Dew "Throwback", which is Mt. Dew with sugar instead of Corn Syrup! Now Crab-Mama can't complain at all about my little habit (well, except for the ring around the belly.)) Then we were off to launch the balloon.

We exited on 69 South at exit 3, which is literally in the middle of Nowhere, MI. Well, not literately. As we were driving, I recognized that we were in Amish Country, since there was horse poo lining the road, and none of the houses had electricity or phone or cable or satellite dishes or cars on blocks. We found a nice little section of field, and I stopped at one of the houses to ask if we could use their field to launch our weather balloon. As soon as I got out of the car, there were about eight people standing on the porch staring at me. Since it takes nine Amish people to intimidate me, and not eight (six of which were kids!), I proceeded to explain about the project and ask if we could use their field. They agreed, so we started setting up.

The day was a very nice day for following a balloon, but it was a crappy day for filling a balloon, since the surface gusts were around 20 MPH. We set up close to some trees, which is strange, but with high winds, you want the wind to shelter you a little. Also, you launch with the trees to your back (pretend they aren't there, and they won't pop you balloon). So, we waited until the "last second" to start filling up the balloon. The wait was caused by them basically having to turn everything on inside their package, then sealing everything up properly. They had to make sure that everything was working properly, etc. Once that happened (about 30 minutes), we started filling.

Filling the balloon is adventurous, since it ends up being about 10 feet in diameter, which, in a 20 MPH wind, causes a drag force of about 100 lbs. That is a fair bit. So, you cover it with a big sheet and have four people holding it down. Once it is filled, you want to launch ASAP. Well, we filled it, and the other team members were playing around with the lines that attach the balloon to the payload. For about 20 minutes. Grrrr..... Finally, everything was ready, and we actually launched.

I should mention that during this time, we had an audience watching us the entire time.

We actually had good communication with the balloon for a while. The team had two radios, two GPS receivers, and two ground stations. Redundancy is good! Their two independent communication systems were on different power systems also. One of the ground-stations basically cut out after a little while, and they weren't really sure what was wrong. BUT, they were transmitting on this thing called the APRS network, which means that if any station in southern Michigan was listening to them, their location would go on to the internet! So, when one of their team lost communication, I fired up the laptop and blackberry and logged into the APRS website, where they were being tracked!

Here is the ground-track of the balloon off of the APRS website:

The balloon package had two cameras on it, one looking sideways and one looking downwards. If you want to see all of the pictures that they got during the whole flight, there are really, really cool. You can see them here.

Here are a couple images to tantalize your buds.

This is one of the first pictures from the downward facing camera. You can see the shadow of the balloon on the ground, which is sort of cool.

These next two are images from the balloon right around the time that it burst, which means it was about 95,000 feet in the air.

The final image is the last image that was taken by the downward camera before it crashed into someone's backyard.

For the last few balloons, people in the chase cars actually saw them burst. This is pretty extraordinary, since the balloon is almost 20 miles above the ground. It expands to about 30-35 feet across, and looks like a star in the sky. We try to keep almost directly under it the whole chase, since you basically know where it is if you can stay under it. When it bursts, though, you can no longer see it. Some people can catch sight of the radar reflector when it gets to be a few miles off the ground, but you have to great eyesight to do this. This comes in handy when you don't have communication with the balloon (as you will find out in story number 3!)

Anyways, we watched the balloon all the way up, saw it burst, tracked it on the APRS web site to almost the ground, then the lead car got communication back with the balloon. I lost the APRS web site for a while due to no cell phone coverage in the area. When I got it back, we tracked the balloon down to about 2,000 feet altitude. The other car got comms down to 760 feet, at which point they stated that "the balloon has really slowed down a lot". Meaning that it had hit the ground. I informed them of this. They were very excited. So, we got the exact location of the balloon and drove straight there. It was too bad that we didn't actually see it land - we were only about a mile away when it did.

We pulled up in a driveway of a house that looked abandoned, but had lots of "No Trespassing" signage. It was the last house next to some open fields. There were also open fields behind the houses. The students knew that it was somewhere behind the houses, so they just ran back there. There it was just sitting behind the third house in. The people who lived in the house right in front of the field came out and talked to us about things, so we got their address and promised to send pictures. The students gathered up the balloon and ran back to the car. They opened it up and discovered that they hadn't taped down the batteries, and so thought that maybe they wouldn't have any pictures at all. The cameras came out and the SD cards were put into a computer, so they could see the pictures, which everyone loved. After this, we all piled into the cars and drove back.

The end!

Work-Life Issues

2009-04-22T21:24:00.001-04:00

The wife is out of town.

I am responsible for Crab Kids for two whole days. There is an interesting dynamic when I am at home alone with the kids. The main driver is my inability to let go of work and just be happy to be at home with the kids. This issue arises during the day, when I am ~sort of~ supposed to be at work. By ~sort of~ I mean that I have an ill defined work schedule and, by self-imposed feelings of guilt (MOTHER!), feel like I should be present at work all of the time. So, instead of taking the day off and saying f*ck-it, let's go to the movies, I try to entertain the kids and check my e-mail and do some simulations and ... Which ends up being a total cluster-f*ck. I feel pretty bad about this.

So, one of my April 22nd resolutions (of which, I have one), is to let work go a little bit more when I am at home with the kids. Set aside the computer and enjoy being with them.

I have often thought about what will ultimately make the kids happy adults, and I am sure that my work schedule (coupled with the wife's work schedule), will actually make them into neurotic workaholics, like their parents. Hmmm... Is that healthy? I think not. So, how do you balance the work-life issue in a way that allows the kids to see that you should work hard at work, but yet, take a little time to enjoy your life?

(ok Mom, stop listening here....)

I am not sure that we got such a great work-life lesson growing up. With two working parents who were gone from 7AM - 5:XX PM everyday, I think that I learned that this is what life is about - work. You put in a hard days work (and it was hard for my Mom). This is what you do. There is no screwing around or playing. Vacations are rare and involve driving to waterfalls somewhere in the East, while cramped in a car with your siblings. (Ahhh, the memories - did I ever tell you the story about how my step-dad threw one of my shoes in the river upstream of Niagara Falls??) The Crab Kids have not experience too much of this bliss - what with Mini Vans, separate seats for each of the kids, iPods, laptops, etc - but they have experienced some vacations of this sort.

So, what am I concerned about? I just think that they see me worrying about the job all of the freaking time, and will do the same thing. Is that how I got my 'work-ethic'? By watching my Mom worry all of the time about her job? Or is it an innate thing inside of us that drives us to kill ourselves for other people - sacrifice ourselves for the 'greater good'? I don't know. But, I can tell you this - sometime soon, when there are no more classes or finals or balloon launches or proposals dues or ... I will just take a day off and take the kids to the zoo. Or, maybe it should be sooner than that.

Anyone want to come?

I'm Alive

2009-04-21T09:46:00.000-04:00

But just barely.... Last week was just nuts. NSF on Monday, Class and such on Tuesday. launches on Wednesday and Thursday. Meetings and more meetings on Friday. Got home after 8 O'clock three times last week.

Today is the last day of class! I am giving the "make-up" file exam today, so the majority of the class is taking the exam.

We have launched only 2 balloons, with 2 more to go. Looks like things are going to be busy tomorrow or Thursday.

Gotta go and mix up exams, so people next to each other don't get the same exam....

Dog Blog

2009-04-14T19:34:00.000-04:00

Lilly, our wonderful K9, had a hard time getting to the bedroom last night. You see, the vacuum was in the hall earlier that day. She is not typically afraid of the vacuum cleaner. But maybe she is afraid of where the vacuum cleaner used to be. Since Crab Mama moved the vacuum cleaner, Lilly won't walk past that spot unless I am with her. She just sits in the middle of the hall and whines.

What a good, smart dog you are. Yes you are. Brains! That's what you have. Yes you do!

Balloons and Rockets

2009-04-11T10:44:00.000-04:00

First balloons:

For the last few years, I have been teaching a class on "system integration", which is basically a way to say, "put all of the these parts together and see if they work". As I have stated many times on this blog, I feel like students should have some hands-on practical experience. So, in my grad-level class, I don't teach them anything, I make them do something. And that something is launching a balloon up to 100,000 feet. But, they have to recover the payload and follow FAA regulations. The first part is relatively easy, but the second part makes things a bit more complicated. This is because, to track the balloon, all you need is a GPS and a radio. Stick that on the balloon and you are basically done. BUT, FAA regulations say that you have to be able to kill your balloon at a moments notice. Which means that you have to communicate WITH your balloon. Hence, you have to have a little computer on-board and enable a cut-down switch and all sorts of other crap, which is quite complicated. It is basically like launching a little satellite.

It is that time of year when the students are just about done with their balloon builds and are getting ready to launch. I have some great stories about balloon launches, which I will leave to another time, but I will include a picture from one of the balloons (from last year), and a story of tether testing...

This is a picture from pretty close to 100,000 feet. The balloon that took this picture landed in Lake Erie, which is was not supposed to do. Obviously. It was a pretty screwed up day. But, that is a story for another day. Let up proceed with yesterday's cluster f*ck.

First thing that you have to realize is that a weather balloon is BIG. Here is a picture of yours truly holding a balloon on a very, very calm day.

They are about 8 feet in diameter. On a calm day, this is no big deal to handle, but on a windy day, the horizontal drag force on the balloon is enormous. This means that it wants to go with the wind. Not stay in your hand. Go. Sideways.

The general idea of a tether test is to raise the balloon up a few hundred feet, and then verify that the communication system is working perfectly. You also test your balloon filling procedures and stuff like that. The big problem with tether tests is that they NEVER WORK! The wind ALWAYS causes a problem. The issue is that the balloon is lifting the payload in the air (but just barely, since the payload is heavy), but the wind (even a light wind), exerts enough force to blow the balloon back to the ground (picture an upside down pendulum).

Well, I had experienced this effect two times in the past, with disastrous consequences both times, so I was not feeling too positive about the tether test that the students wanted to perform yesterday. But, being adventurous, I agreed.

So, we get out on the field, and the wind is blowing at something like 10+ MPH constantly. It is quite difficult to actually control the balloon while filling it if the wind is blowing, so typically, you use a sheet over the balloon. The sheet has to be quite large, since the balloon is quite large. Like, really large. Typically, I encourage a big sheet with rope tied on to each corner. Well, they didn't have anything like that. So, we dealt with it. Then other things went wrong. And more things.

The predictable thing happened - the balloon didn't rise off the ground because the package was too heavy and the wind was blowing too strong. So, we packed it in and called it a night. Then, as we were reeling the balloon in (package in hand!) the cords snapped and the balloon took off. The perfect ending.

Or, a great start to balloon season!

Ok, now rockets.

For two semesters now, I have taught a rocket science class, in which we take a class period and actually launch rockets. In order to up the ante a little bit, I give extra credit to students who bring a rocket. Last semester, I got about 20 or so students. This semester over a hundred students brought rockets. It was absolutely insane. We set up three launchers, with Crab Girl helping out the students to launch their rockets.

We had many rockets in which the parachutes did not open, so they drilled into the ground. It was quite humorous. A really funny part was when one of the students did a very loud count down, and then nothing happened. Typical NASA.... Then another student, who had obviously built the rocket himself, launched it up in the air about 30 feet, where it jogged a bit to the left, circled around for about 5 seconds, then exploded. Very exciting stuff!

My Dad came to the launch. The kids, the neighbor and the kids and a co-worker and his son. As I was doing this, I thought, "Wow, I get paid to do this!"

In one of my last posts I said that I hate every aspect of my job. I don't. I hate all aspects, but these. I love these aspects. On days like Thursday and Friday, I am very happy to actually work where I work, doing what I do.

LA Bitch

2009-04-06T22:14:00.000-04:00

Our new dog Lilly is from LA. I am not sure if she had ever seen snow before coming to Michigan. When she first came, the snow was pretty thin and icy. There was basically nothing there except frozen ground.

Well, last night it snowed about 6 inches. When I took Lilly out for a pee last night (while it was snowing), she freaked out and didn't want to go outside. When I "encouraged" her, she tried to dodge the snowflakes. It was quite amusing.

This morning, on her walk, she was completely freaked out by it. She would walk for a little while, like normal, and then just start running in a random direction. She does this typically when she is afraid of an animal or something. So, was she afraid of the snow covered ground? I don't know. Then, for a while, she would run with her tongue out, licking the snow the whole time. She was like Crab Boy, just wanting to eat as much snow as possible. Also quite funny.

I wonder, if you took people from LA and dumped 6 inches of snow on them, would they freak out also?

Yet another summary blog

2009-04-03T20:48:00.001-04:00

I am drunk on a Friday night. I almost never get drunk, but after the last couple of days...

First the good:

1. I rode my bike yesterday. 28 miles (14 to work, 14 home). I felt like a real man. I didn't eat dinner yesterday or lunch today. I think I have lost a little weight. Which is a good start. I still need to lose about 15 pounds, but, for the beginning of spring, I have a relatively good start on things.

2. Uh... The dog hasn't taken a crap in the house in like 2 weeks. And she hasn't peed in the house in a week. Good times!

3. Hmmm... more good things.... Did I mention that I am drunk?

Now the bad:

1. Work. Pretty much every f*cking aspect of it. We have given our codes to this place that makes runs available to the general community. They run and run and run and let people request runs and do all sorts of stuff for people. They are having problems with our code. Months ago, they were having issues because they were getting a result that they liked (a non physical current at the boundary). I explained why this occurred, but they wanted me to fix it. Well, it turns out that they were using nonphysical conditions to begin with - they want to run with these nonphysical conditions and get physically meaningful results. I tried to explain to them how this wasn't really the way the code worked. They basically threatened to use someone else's code. Ok. I explained that I wasn't really making up the laws of nature here. If you runs this other guy's code with nonphysical conditions, then you are going to get the same nonphysical type of answers - unless he cheats. Well, they didn't use the other guy's code and the issue was basically dropped. Now, it has surfaced again. They are running the code in a completely different regime and they are still using the nonphysical condition. They didn't tell me this, though. They just told me that they were having problems, and another person in my group pointed at my code, and said, it's probably this code's fault. So, I spent all day yesterday and today working on this problem, only to find out tonight that it was most likely all due to them using nonphysical conditions. And, when I said, don't use those conditions, they came back with "well, what SHOULD we use..." Uh, physical conditions. Like other runs that you do. You know. When the code works (like 95+%) of their simulations). Do those types of runs. It just pisses me off that I have to spend my time on this crap when I could be doing real work.

2. I haven't cooked a real meal in ages. Our kitchen is a complete disaster. We have to do our taxes. I have to do my brother's taxes. I have to do laundry again, and last week's laundry hasn't even been put away yet. The toilet bowl cleaning consists of me wiping it with some toilet paper and calling it good. I didn't get home until 8:30 last night. There are shredded toilet paper roles all over the basement and first floor, because we don't have enough energy to sweep them up. And the dog will just produce more, so, what's the point? We have had pizza boxes in our recycle bin every week for the last month (not a good sign). You get the point.

3. My Post Doc sucks. It's only been two weeks. I have to give him a break. I am trying to. I am trying to be extremely patient. I am trying to not be myself. Except, that by not being myself, I am actually being myself. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt for long periods of time, and then get so incredibly frustrated with them, that I explode all over everything. Which is basically what I am doing, giving him the benefit of the doubt. I need to have more open communication. That is the real issue. When someone starts disappointing me, I start avoiding them, since I am pissed off. What I really need to do is talk to them (only, where do you find the time??? It is so much easier just to avoid the issue all together!) As an example, I gave him an extremely concrete thing to do - figure out this model output from this web site. If you can't figure it out, e-mail the author and ask her an extremely simple question. Then we can implement the model in our code and see what it does. We discussed this a week ago, and he has not done it. I completely understand that he is adjusting to living here and has not had a desktop computer (but has a laptop) to do work on, but this is a very, very easy task. Now what???

Ok, I am going to give up on life and try to flush myself down the toilet. Wish me luck!

Robots!

2009-03-31T18:53:00.000-04:00

I am here at my daughter's robotics class. She is doing this in the evenings. Theoretically, she is learning C, too, but not really. They are still playing with building the robots without actually programming them. Four boys and my daughter. And, if I am not biased, she is probably the best one there. Totally unbiased. She was actually the lead programmer for her Lego Robotics team last year. Yeah, she pretty much kicks ass (Crab-Girl, if you are reading this at some point in the future, you do kick ass!)

Was I this geeky when I was a kid? The guy who is running the class is something like 15 years old. He is a super geek. I think that I would have qualified as being in this category also. I don't know if he is wearing tube socks with his wallet in his sock, but maybe that was only cool in the 80s? Ok, enough ragging on poor 15 year-old kids that will eventually grow up to be me....

Music

2009-03-28T12:51:00.000-04:00

I love music. I love listening to music. I would have it on all of the time, just because. I have actually, at times, been listening to something soft and delicate and said to my self, I should listen to music and move to put something on, and realized that there was already music playing. I just is so much a part of me.

I like a wide variety of music, but I have to admit, that I don't wander off the beaten path too much. Most of the music that you would find on my computer is music that you could hear on SOME radio station. What typically happens is that I hear a song that I really love, and then I go out and get every album by that band/person. Some examples:

1. Oingo Boingo. Everyone knows "Weird Science", but very few people have pretty much everything that they have ever made (well, I don't have everything...) "Cinderella Undercover" is one of the best songs ever made. "The cartoon animals on Old McDonald's Farm, are nodding off with needles in their arms."

2. B-52s. "Love Shack"? You think that's the best there is? "Rock Lobster" and "Wig" are the best. Then "Planet Clare" and "Private Idaho". Come on. It doesn't get any better than this. When you are cleaning the house on a bright spring day, nothing is better.

3. Metallica. Hell Yeah. These guys rock. But, I have to admit, that most of the popular songs are their best songs. "One" is so unbelievable. "Master of Puppets" is ok, but there are definitely better.

4. Kate Bush. Ok, I haven't listened to here in a long, long time. Haven't listened to Tori Amos much lately either.

5. Springsteen. Nebraska is one of the best albums ever made. Tunnel of Love. That is some good stuff.

6. We are on a Coldplay kick. Not gay, but love Coldplay.

Ok, I don't need to go through all the music I listen to. You pretty much get the point. It is close to the path. Not exactly on it, but close.

Just getting by

2009-03-27T21:43:00.000-04:00

I am feeling guilty because I haven't written anything in a while. So here is a catch-up blog:

1. My students took a test on Tuesday. In preparation, one of the GSIs held a review session (he was sick of getting e-mail questions also). I bet him a beer that the test grades would be unaffected by (a) the fact that we tried to put together a very nice test and (b) he was holding a review session. I don't know about the other sections of the test yet, but the multiple choice average was 81%, which I bet him it would be 82% +/- 2%. Nailed it. I guess I am a cynical old bastard. But right.

2. I went to Washington DC for a 1-day meeting on what type of science you can do from a suborbital platform that will be launched every few days (think commercial space ventures). The general idea is that only rich people will pay $200,000 to go into space, but a $200,000 is cheap for a rocket flight from NASA's standards. It is quite interesting. The flights are about 10 minutes long. You experience 5g on the way up and 6g on the way down. And are ~weightless~ for something like 3 minutes. That would be really cool. But, I bitch about spending $50 each for all day at Lego Land.

3. I rode my bike from downtown to home. I was hardly tired, which is a good sign. My butt didn't hurt either. Great. I think I am going to bribe the kids to let me go for bike ride tomorrow.

4. My new Post Doc started work about a week ago. It will be an interesting ride. He has an interesting personality. I am not sure that I understand it right now. I will try to keep you posted. We ordered a computer for him a week ago and it still hasn't come in. That is frustrating. You basically can't work without a computer. He is very intent on doing one specific thing, while I want him to work on other things. While it is ok for him to work on this one thing a bit, it is what he keeps coming back too. I really hope that he works out....

5. I finally got a grad student to agree to come work with us. He is from just down the road. Seems like a nice guy. He actually works in the building with some other folks right now, who really like him. Good programmer, which is what I really need too. So, I am hopeful on that front.

6. With Obama's $3,000,000,000 infusion of cash into the National Science Foundation, and an increase in next year's budget of something like 10%, it may be a very good year for me. We shall see. I was told a few months ago that if the 09 budget is passed, I will get a grant. So, it has passed. Further, I was on another (hardware) grant for something like $2M. That now has a very good chance of being funded. And I have been asked by people to write another (hardware) grant for about $2+M (depending on the language of the NSF major research instrumentation grant call for proposals). If all of this money comes in, I am going to have to hire a large number of people to help out. And I have a NASA grant that is pending that I was told should be announced on March 19. It is now well beyond this date. Typically, if you are informed by the date, it is bad news. So, the longer it takes, the better the news may be.

7. New Yellow Dog still pees in house. News at 11. Actually, she is doing really well, except for at night around 9 PM, when we just have walked her an hour before, so we don't believe that she really has to pee. Then she does. In the house. So, now we are taking her outside all of the freaking time. During our only resting time. Nice. But, whatever.

8. I read 4 student papers in 2 days. These are full up, submitting to a major journal papers, not undergraduate class papers. What a pain in the ass.

9. I have 2 more to read that are not student papers. Interestingly, both are by the same first author. I am co-author on one and (anonymously) reviewing the other for a Journal. Strange.

10. I have gotten a few "Death Cab for Cutie" albums (what do you call a collection of mp3s now? Not a disk. Not an album. A pod?) I bought one from Amazon ($9.97 for mp3 downloads, which is a okish deal... at least they will play on other things besides an iPod, which I don't have - I have a Blackberry).

11. On that note, I hate the way the Blackberry handles multimedia. It sucks donkey balls. And you can quote me. This is my official review for my Blackberry: "e-mail - ok; surfing the web - sucks; Blackberry mapping program - sucks; Google maps on blackberry - awesome; mp3 player - sucks donkey balls; and as a phone - ok." When you move all of your mp3s onto the memory card, and restart the blackberry, it makes some sort of a database of the songs and such. Only, it takes it about 10 minutes to do this (every time you turn on or off your BB - think about airplanes....) And then, if this was the only issue, it would be fine, but no, it actually looses songs and whole albums. So, one time you turn it on, the new Death Cab for Cutie album shows up, but the next time, it doesn't. So, you reboot. Doesn't show up. Screw it, listen to something else. Another interesting feature is if you listen to music while it is trying to build this database, it stops building it. So, what you have when you start building is it. Now, it doesn't loose it off the memory card, it just doesn't figure out that it is there. Really irritating. Contract is up in November. Can anyone say "iPhone for Christmas?" Oh, I can.

12. Crab boy is growing his hair out long. He looks so shaggy now it is unbelievable.

13. Crab girl got her bottom pallet expander. Crab Mama had to bribe her with ice cream for a week to do it. Small bribe for what she will get out of it. Her top expander is working miracles - she has something like 6+ mm of more space up there. Hopefully they won't have to yank more teeth when all of her adult teeth come in. I had 8 yanked. Maybe they can keep her to 4....???

14. We lost connection to out instrument that is sitting out on the Antarctic continent. It is literally in the middle of no where. It took six weeks to get people in there to deploy it. I strongly advocated to put it at McMurdo (which is about a week to get to and a few days to get home from) for a year to field test it. I was outvoted ("why do we need to test it when it is an almost copy of the last one that we built???" Oh, it turns out that they have lots of failures on Iridium modems - and if they fail, your instrument is basically dead in the water.) I am pretty sick of being outvoted by people and doing it their way, only to have a big old turd drop on us. I am going to start bringing up all of the turds. They will be flying around like a turd storm if people dismiss what I say any more. Turds will be hitting the fan. It had to be said.

15. Crab Mama just left the room to go to bed. So, I guess my time has come.

Later.

Pansy-*ss Students

2009-03-22T22:01:00.000-04:00

For the last few semesters, I have given students a list of questions that may appear on the test. I then say that if you can answer all of these questions, you will probably do really well on the test.

Now, this semester, a number of students have e-mailed me and my GSIs direct questions directly from my power point, asking me to answer the questions. WTF is that about? I can not believe that students would come out and just cut and paste questions from the ppt doc and ask me to answer them. Why don't you show up to class? Even the last class, in which I read all of the questions to the students and allowed them to ask questions. Like "can you answer that one?" To which, I asked for anyone else in the class to answer it. They usually did. If no one knew the answer, I answered it in detail.

I really think that this is because I don't require students to attend class. I think that I have a LARGE part of the class that doesn't bother showing up at all. That really pisses me off.

It says something fundamental about the way that I am. If I give you freedom, I expect you to pull your end, and not f*ck around. It seems like a lot of people don't understand that. I imagine that I don't communicate that very well. I will have to try harder.

It is sort of like putting a sign on yourself that says "hey, walk all over me!" and being pissed off when people do. The sign comes off now.

granny taxes

2009-03-17T21:31:00.000-04:00

My mother (Crab-Granny) is sitting next to me. Waiting on hold with the IRS so we can finish up e-filling her taxes. She recommended that I blog about it an use swear words. So - sh*t.

Space

2009-03-16T13:22:00.000-04:00

Two years ago, when I moved into a Tenure-Track position I was given lab space. I told them "I don't have any hardware projects, so I don't need this space right now." I was told that yes I do need that space, because space is like gold - you horde it and don't give it up.

So, I used the space to teach in. I have a lab class in which they build stuff. Instead of using the crowded student labs and have to work out schedules with the other faculty to share the space, I just use my own lab space for student activities. About a week ago, my department chair comes into the office and asks me what I am using my lab space for, since we are hiring new faculty and we need space (and he knows that I don't have a hardware project right now). I tell him that I am using it for student space. He coughs a bit and tells me that I am not supposed to do that. There is student lab space for student activities. I tell him that it is crowded etc. He basically says so what, and I am pretty sure he is going to take the space away.

I just got off the phone with the building manager, who asked me what I am using my lab space for. Hint hint. The end is drawing near.

I have been writing grants and such to actually get hardware projects. We just need a little patience. But, my department chair doesn't have patience. So, I will probably lose my lab space. And the students will then lose their space. And this will happen the same month that I win a grant to do hardware. I am absolutely sure of this.

So, NSF program directors, if you are listening, please give me even a tiny bit of money, so I can convince my chair to let me keep my lab. Please.

This really sort of pisses me off, since I didn't want the damn space in the first place. Now that I am actually using it for what I think is a good cause, they are going to take it away because education is not important in our department. Space is important.

On Learning

2009-03-14T12:00:00.000-04:00

In the last few months, I have been on a committee in the college to look at how we should alter our college-level curriculum to enhance learning and education. This has been a really interesting experience for me, since it has demonstrated that some of my ideas for how things should be taught may be correct. We have had general discussions, have had some interviews with alumni, and have talked to companies that hire our alumni.

There really appears to be a common theme among the feedback - we should do more practical projects. The general idea is that students learn by doing. In an engineering class, you can sit there and be taught about resistors and capacitors all day, but you won't really know how to use them until someone sticks you in a lab and you have to build something. Taking it a step further, you won't understand what they are for until you have to build something that is not specified in a cookie-cutter lab project.

We have really talked about this as a general concept in all aspects of education. What this really means is that we have to start using open-ended questions to figure things out. Questions that may not have a clearly defined right or wrong. You have to make your own assumptions, justify those assumptions, then answer the question. This is not how things are done in school. Students don't like this because it is hard and it is very difficult to quantify what you have to do to get an "A" in the class. Memorizing facts and formulas is much easier. It is just too bad that this is not what life is really like. It is also much more difficult for professors also. You can't ask simple multiple choice questions, since they don't probe the issues at all. You have to ask more open-ended questions, then actually read all of the answers. That is painful in large classes. It is also almost impossible to do with graduate instructors grading things also, since there may not be any clearly defined answer. So, how do tell the GI to grade it? "You will know the correct answer(s) when you see it/them." That works for some GIs, but not all.

There are further problems with this idea. The biggest of which is that most professors feel that you have to pack the student's heads with FACTS. If you don't teach them all of the FACTS then you have not done your job! So, classes are jammed with lesson after lesson on the facts of some issue or another issue, instead of how to use those facts for something practical.

The most extreme case of the 'anti-fact' 'pro-doing' teaching that I have seen is that a professor was advocating doing away with calculus, and teaching students how to do integrals and derivatives on the computer. Since, few students actually use integral tables anymore, they simply use Maple or Mathematica to solve complicated equations. This is sort of a natural extension to log/sin/cos tables. When I was in high-school, we learned how to look up the solution to log(x) on a table, instead of on a calculator, even though calculators were available most places. Now, I can imagine that this is not taught, since you can buy a calculator at Target for a nickel. How many students today have a big book of integral tables? Why bother when you can use a computer? Would it be better teaching student why you might want to actually use calculus? Give the students problems that they may actually be exposed to in everyday life (well, maybe life on their job...) This maybe sort of an extreme example.

In my department, we produce a lot of students who are supposed to do something very, very, very practical. But, we don't have a single professor in the department that does that practical thing. And the faculty have no motivation what-so-ever to hire a tenured faculty member to do that. So, we pay a research faculty member who specializes in that practical thing to teach the two actual practical classes that we offer. The students love those classes and would like more. But we don't offer them more. Instead, we offer classes on more facts about the processes. This, to me, is a completely screwed up system.

I am a relatively young faculty member who has been teaching for only a few years. Maybe I am naive. I can believe that. But, I think that, while I am young enough to listen to what students and outside members of the general community want, I will try to slowly change our department to teaching more "hands-on" classes. Maybe our students will succeed more and we will grow. Who knows?

200 students can bring you down

2009-03-10T09:55:00.000-04:00

I am once again spending every waking minute on my class. They have an essay due on Thursday that is worth 16% of their grade. Don't ask why it is 16% instead of 15 or 20. They are slightly panicked about it. I would imagine that students are going to office hours of the GSIs, but they are also e-mailing me all of the time.

Further, my GSI who is posting the homework assignments doesn't get anyone else to look at the questions, so each week we have a bunch of issues with the homework. So, I have to respond to 20 questions that are all exactly the same.

Then, I am preparing some lectures that I didn't do last semester, so I am spending many hours doing that.

A few students want to come talk to me about their failing grades ("Here is why I haven't done any homework - can you pass me???") I don't want to have these conversations. I need to be a dick, and I am not a dick. Actually, I have to remember that these students have done it to themselves, so I am not being a dick giving them the grade that they have earned. Yeah - keep telling yourself this.

Needless to say, I am getting burned out on class stuff.

Ok, bitchy-bitch time is over. I have to go teach.

Relatively Content

2009-03-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

Here are the things that I have been up to in the last few days:

1. I was in Boulder CO on Friday. Which feels like yesterday. What happened to Saturday? It was a blur. Anyways. I had sort of a European dinner while in Boulder - started off with drinks around 5:00 and finished dinner around 8:30. Not very typical! And, I didn't get to eat a Spicy Chicken Burrito at the Southern Sun! This is my favorite meal in Boulder. But, I will survive. I promise.

2. Last week I didn't get to work out at all. Or, more precisely, I didn't get to work out the week before because I was traveling, and last week I was too lazy to do it. I have been falling farther and farther behind on sleep, so it was difficult for me to get up at all last week, let alone get up with enough time to go to the YMCA. I am a fat blob. Well, a blob that weighs something like 20 lbs (8 kg) more than I would like. And I drink too much Mt. Dew. This week, I will work out.

3. I don't have to travel again until the 26th. That is like 2 weeks away! I was supposed to go to Europe that week, but I canceled. But then got asked to attend a 1-day meeting in Washington. So, I will go there for <24 hours. For the next 2 weeks I can work and work and work. By this I mean write reports and other crap that I don't really want to do, but have to do. Like I said, work.

4. It has been raining a lot lately. That means that we get to deal with wet dog.

5. I have to make up some lectures for my class. I promised them that I would discuss some cool topic and now have to actually do it. I am not really complaining about it, just stating facts. Tonight I will be doing some research....

6. Crab-boy mad a list of things that we had to do today. It was great. He had a few items that he absolutely wanted me to do for him, so he suggested a list. I agreed. We put things like "eat breakfast" and "walk the dog" on there, as well as "hang up Lego ships" and "Fix fishing pole", which were the real motivators.

7. I wish Battlestar Galactica made more sense. There are only 2 episodes to go and it is still very confusing.

8. Crab Mama tells me that I should go wash myself. I guess I should do that.

Sh*tty Miracles

2009-03-05T09:35:00.000-05:00

Lilly has gone 2 days without any indoor excremental excitations.

And the beaded dragon took the biggest crap you have ever seen. All by himself.

It truly is a blessed day.

State of Disrepair

2009-03-02T22:14:00.000-05:00

Our new dog, Lilly, is a fine dog. She is happy and playful and loves to jump up and down and have fun with you. She fetches and acts like a dog. Heidi, our older, more mature dog, wants nothing to do with that crap. She is frumpy.

The problem, you see, is that Lilly pees and poops on the floor. That is hard to put up with. For example, this evening, we got home, and immediately took Lilly out. She peed. Crab-Girl played with her for a while outside, where she peed again. She came inside and played for a little while in the house, where she peed again. We cleaned that up. Then an hour later, she she peed inside again. She has never actually peed twice in an hour, so having her pee 4 times in 4 hours was quite shocking. Well, now we know.

NASA launched a $300M satellite the other day. It crashed. Oops. I can't imagine being on that team. You think that you have 2-5 years of steady funding coming in, with lots of great science to do, then wham, the satellite blows up and you have no more funding and no more science to do. Crap-burgers.

I am in a sh*t mood. Once again. I have a bunch of reports to read and/or do and I have no motivation to do them.

I am going to Boulder on Friday to have a meeting. The people who are hosting told me today that we can't use Macs. We have to use the Windows machine provided. "Test your powerpoint on a Windows machine!" the person tells me. F*ck that. I don't do Windows. I don't have a Windows machine to test my powerpoint on. Why would I? Why would anyone?

I am going to go to bed before I start swearing more.

Ok. One more. F*ck.

Berated

2009-02-27T21:14:00.001-05:00

I am being berated by my brother right now about how I didn't wear sunscreen and got burned. I did wear it, but not on my chest. Therefore I got burned on my chest. Now I am being yelled at. Literally. By my brother. On the phone. For the last five minutes. Nice.

More Horrible Times in Hawaii

2009-02-25T12:20:00.000-05:00

Yesterday during lunch we took a drive out to this place that has "Dragon's Teeth":

We saw something stirring in the ocean:

And saw the ocean with bluffs and surfers:

Bumming in Hawaii

2009-02-24T16:40:00.000-05:00

Yeah, being in Hawaii sucks.

Here is are a couple of views outside of my window at sunrise.

I haven't actually taken any pictures at the beach. I will try to do that today.

Don't tell Crab-Mama that Hawaii is not horrible.

Thoughts on big numbers

2009-02-23T11:55:00.000-05:00

I thought that I should write something interesting, instead of random rants....

My daughter’s favorite number is a google, which is 10 to the power 100. I tried to explain to her how big a google is, but was somewhat stumped. Let me explain.

Take the sun. The sun is about 100 times bigger than the Earth. Since we are only dealing with orders of magnitude here, let’s call it 1,000,000 km in radius, which is 10^6 km, or 10^9 m. The volume of the sun would therefore be 4/3 pi r^3, which is about 4x10^18 m3. Now, there are roughly 10^23 atoms in a cubic cm of water (I think…). This is 10^29 atoms in a m3. If we assume that the sun is 100 times more dense than water, we get something on the order of 10^31 atoms in m3 in the sun, so the number of atoms on the sun is something like (4x10^18 * 10^31) 4x10^49. Let’s round it off and say that there are 10^50 atoms in our solar system (i.e. add all the atoms of the planets together – the largest of which is 10 times smaller than the sun – and add it to the sun’s number of atoms).

Ok, I am reading this book that says that there are something like a billion (10^9 stars in our galaxy). That means, if the average star is about the same size as ours, there are 10^59 atoms in our galaxy. Now we really stretch things – if you take one of the pictures of a dark section of the sky from the Hubble telescope, it shows that there are thousands of galaxies in each little section of the sky (roughly about 1 million sections of the sky). Let’s then assume that there are 10,000 x 1,000,000 (or 10^10) galaxies out there, each of which is roughly the same size as ours. This means that there are a total of about 10^69 atoms on all of the galaxies out there. Even if we are off by a factor of a million somewhere, we still something like 10^75.

So, to get a google atoms, you need a billion, billion, billion universes.

A google is a BIG number.

BTW, if you assume that the universe is 20 billion years old, the universe is 6x10^17 seconds old. Compared to a google, the universe is a very, very, very young puppy.

Along the same lines, while walking on the beach in Chile, some friends of mine and I tried to figure out whether, in your life time, you breath in the whole atmosphere. Let’s assume that you take 1 breath per second and that you breath in 1 liter of air (which is 10^3 cm3, or 1^-3 m3). This means that it would take 1000 seconds (about 16 minutes) to breath in 1 m3. Assuming that you live to the rip age of 100 (3x10^9 seconds), you would breath in 3x10^6 m3 of air in your life time – 3 million cubic meters of air. Wow!

But, how big is the atmosphere? The surface of the Earth is 5x10^14 m2, while the atmosphere can be approximated to be a layer 10 km high (with uniform density instead of exponentially decreasing density!), which makes the atmosphere 5x10^18 m3 in volume. That means that you breathe in 0.00000000005% of the atmosphere in your lifetime. Yikes!

In Memory of Paul

2009-02-21T16:25:00.000-05:00

He was a good bunny. He will be sadly missed. We hope that his back legs work better where ever he is now.

I wasn't able to break the news to my own daughter, since I had to get on an airplane this morning, and we felt that it would be better to tell her after I left, since it was 7 AM. I have no idea how she is doing. Hopefully not too bad.

A Rant from Seattle

2009-02-21T16:12:00.000-05:00

It is interesting how, sometimes, you can get so busy that you can’t concentrate on anything every well. At some point, you have so many things on your plate that nothing can get done. You turn to to-do lists, but still, the interruptions, e-mail, people knocking on your office door, the telephone, all serve to fragment your time to the point in which your switching algorithms in your brain overload. It seems like this is my constant state now. I have been traveling so much, always preparing for the next meeting, and trying to just keep up with the random sh*t that seems to constantly appear.

Example – We have a recruitment event in our department every spring. I helped organize it two years ago. I did such a good job, I was asked to do it again last year. I said no. Fantastic. This year, I get an e-mail two days before the event, saying that the department chair couldn’t make the event, and so could I come and give his talk (welcome to our glorious depart… we do lots of great/fun/entertaining things… if you come here, it is guaranteed that you will be a millionaire when you graduate… etc). I reluctantly agree and add it to my calendar. The day comes, and I show up to give a little speech. Who is there? The department chair. WTF, I say, why are you here? To watch. WTF? WTF? WTF? Come on. Then the next day, he tells two administrative assistants to light a fire under me to take my white boards out of the meeting room, since they have been sitting there for a while (I have 24 hours, or ~something~ is going to happen). While I am trying to prepare for a week long meeting that he is forcing me to go to (where I am presenting about 5 talks). It can’t wait? He is not even going to be there, since he is preparing for the same meeting. WTF?

Another Example – It is time to pick graduate students. I have actually only actively chosen two graduate students in my life. Both of who happen to be women from China. I basically picked the students with the best grades and GRE score. These happen to be women. From China. I am sorry. On the other hand, I have “inherited” graduate students from others. My other student (American male) came to me because the guy that he was working with was not working out. So, I took him on. He is a great student. And he is going to graduate very soon. I am sort of a strong believer in diversity. And, the sad thing is that diversity, in this case, means that I need to replace him with another American (male or female – it doesn’t matter to me.) Indeed, if you count the people in the lab where my students work, there are 4 people of Asian decent and 2 Americans. So, I look through the pool of applicants for Americans. I choose the top couple that have the highest grades and GRE scores and send them e-mails asking about whether they would be interested in working with some old crotchety bastard who happens to do magnetospheric modeling. All of the e-mails come back with something like “can you provide more details on what, specifically, I would be working on” and “I am not admitted yet, so I can’t say whether I am coming to UM.” To the first, I reply “Modeling. The magnetosphere. Magnetospheric physics.” (but more eloquently). To the second, I explain how they need to pair up with an advisor, who will be the one who actually gives them the nod whether they will be admitted or not. More e-mails. More questions. And not right away. They are spaced by a day or two. Come on. Do you want to come to graduate school or no? Quit pussy-footing around and make up your mind. One guy comes back with “I am starting an internship with someone in a few weeks, and after I figure out whether I like what I am doing there, I will let you know.” To which, my only response is “well, I am making a choice now. So, have a nice life.” So, what was my point? I have to spend tons of (fragmented) time dealing with these people, trying to convince them that this place is a glorious Mecca where all of their dreams will come true. Please, let me stroke your ego so you can just go somewhere else after jerking me around for a few weeks. I gotta say, this pisses me off like you would not believe. If you want to go somewhere else, where you won’t get nearly as good of an education or research experience, go ahead. Just stop wasting my time.

I genuinely enjoy dealing with students; graduate students and undergraduate students, both. Especially in a learning environment, in which I can spark imagination in them, or help them accomplish some goal that they would not have been able to accomplish on their own. It is a joy to me. Except when I help too many students. Or am asked to do too much. Then, some invisible line gets crossed, and I no longer enjoy it. And it is not like I enjoy 80% of it, and the other 20% is what pisses me off – it ends up being all of it. Once the line is cross, and the switching in my head starts to malfunction, I don’t enjoy any of it. I despise all aspects of my job. This then creeps into my home life, and I end up despising all of the little requests that my wife and kids make. That just kills me.

I watched the Incredible Hulk the other day (trapped on an airplane – I am writing this trapped on an airplane also). When his heart rate went above 200 BPM, he turned green and angry. That is how I feel when I have something like 20 things on my to-do list. Angry. Very, very angry. Interestingly, I actually get a physical symptom of this too – my eyes start to twitch. What is next - green rashes on my skin?

The thing that I have to try to do is to figure out how to not put things on my to-do list. How can I say no to the assistant who asks if I can talk for the department chair? “No!” But, at the same time, how can you not find a new graduate student? How can you avoid all the crap that comes along with recruiting? I guess I should think about it a little bit and be more intelligent about how I approach the subject. Maybe I make sure that my group web-site is up-to-date, and I tell them to go look at my web-site. If they like what they see, say yes. If they don’t, then fine. I somehow have to be smarter about this whole thing.

The problem, right now, is I can’t think. I can’t form coherent thoughts in my head because I am torn in 50 different directions. How can you catch up and be smart about it all at the same time?

So, instead of working on one of my talks that I have to give in 48 hours (of which, I have accomplished nothing), I am writing in my blog and reading a book. I feel guilty about this, but I just physically can’t work anymore. A breaker has been thrown.

WTF did I do?

2009-02-17T09:31:00.000-05:00

Reasons to not take your family to LA:

1. You spend a lot of money bribing them that they don't need to go to Lego Land (which costs >$200 to get in for a family of 4). We bought 4 wands at Whimsic Alley and a bunch of other crap. But, we "saved" $130.

2. You get a f*cking dog and ship her home with you.

What they hell did I do???? We were supposed to be making decisions that would make our lives easier. Every major decision, we ask "will it make our lives easier or more difficult?" If yes, then we should NOT do it. But, we did it anyways.

Now we have 2 dogs, a bunny, a bearded dragon that won't sh*t to save his life, two fish tanks with 2 and 5 fish. That is an *ss-load of pets. WTF?

Ok, the new dog, Lilly (already named), loves me, while our old dog (Heidi), hates me. She is deathly afraid of men, and won't let me pet her unless I am sitting on the couch or laying down in bed. Lilly, on the other hand, follows me around everywhere. She wants to go for walks with me, and comes when I call her. We hope that she will teach Heidi to be a normal dog.

But, our pets significantly outnumber us. Crap.

LAX

2009-02-10T00:16:00.000-05:00

About 2 weeks ago, I was making plans to come to LA for a workshop (conference, meeting, whatever), and went to buy tickets. They were only a couple hundred dollars, so I asked the Crab-Mama if she would like to come out with the kids with me. She agreed, so we bought tickets, and now we are all in Los Angeles for the week. Obviously, we can't do this often, but once in a while, it makes it quite nice to bring everyone along.

Crab-Mama's Mama lives out here, as well as good friends that we have. So, while I listen to scientists pontificating on why their ideas are the only relevant ones around, the Crablets will be enjoying things like the zoo and Sea World and such. Well, maybe. It depends on how much we can actually afford to do. Maybe swim in Granny-Crab #3's pool for a bit...???

It is funny that the week we come out the LA, the weather turns very nice in Michigan, and crappy in California. Nice. Oh well, anything is better than the -10 that we have been experiencing for the last couple of months. It has been pretty bitterly cold. Interestingly, I think that I am getting used to it. Got the really-cold-weather coats (layers of winter coats!), gloves, boots, 3 shirts, etc. to protect myself from the elements. I am all good. Not to say that I won't be happy with 40+ degrees. Maybe I can wear shorts!

Ok, it is 12:24 AM in MI. I am exhausted. Crab-Mama just shut her computer, so that is a hint...

Standing in the Shower, Thinking

2009-02-05T08:56:00.000-05:00

As I stood in the YMCA shower this morning, I got to thinking. First, I should point out that the water at the YMCA is not piping hot.

Crab-Mama and I have had many (too many) conversations about people at gyms in locker rooms who walk around buck-naked. To us, it is bizarre. Why would you walk around naked in front of 10-20 other people? Baffling.

This morning, I was once again struck by this thought and it got me thinking about distribution functions and Gaussians (Bell-Curves). The general idea is that most people have similar beliefs or morals or height or weight, etc, but there is a nice (normal) distribution of people that can be described with a standard deviation. For example, the average height of an adult white male is 70 inches. 90% of the adult white males are below 74 inches, and 95% are above 66 inches. The standard deviation is something like 2 or 3 inches in this case. Thanks Google!

The exact same thing is true for our thought processes and morals. For example, most people believe that you should go something like 75 MPH on the expressway. There are a few people who go over 85 and a few people who go under 65, but most people stick to something around 75. If you surveyed enough people, you could figure out the mean and standard deviation, etc, and the distribution function would like a Gaussian. The 75 MPH speed that people go is obviously a function of the speed limit. I would imagine, if you looked at this in terms of morals, you could state that most people believe that it is morally acceptable to go 5 MPH over the speed limit, while 10 is pushing it. 5 under is pushing it also.

For a long time, I never thought of things like this, especially when it came to morals. For example, on the expressway, again. I like to leave a fair bit of space between myself and the person in front of me. Not as much as the government recommends, but more than the average person. I am a statistical outlier in this regard. It actually makes me angry when people follow me too close. I know that this is relatively dangerous and shouldn't be done, but it is the "morally acceptable" thing to do. Look at the distribution functions. If you get TOO close, then you get out of the distribution on the other side, and my outrage would be felt by almost anyone.

This concept can be applied to almost any moral issue. Let's take the biggest moral issue out there - Abortion. While I don't know for a fact that people's feelings on abortion fall onto a Bell Curve, I am pretty confident that they do. I would imagine that most people are centralists in that they think that abortion is basically a thing that you don't really want to encourage, but can see that in some circumstances it is justified. People fall with a distribution around this central idea - some people have an easier time justifying it, while others have a harder time. As you go more out on the fringes, you have people who believe that anyone should be allowed to have an abortion no matter what no matter when. On the other side is the opposite - no abortions for anyone.

I got to thinking about this specific issue because of a line in a book that I am reading. The main character was counting all of the people he knew who had died. He discounted a still born baby because it had never been alive. There are many people who believe that life begins at conception, while others believe that life begins when the baby emerges from it's mother. I would imagine that the vast majority of the people believe that it is somewhere in between these two events - somewhere around the end of the first trimester or when you can hear a heart beat or when the baby could be born and survive (on it's own or doctor assisted?)

It is interesting to me that we can describe the start of "life" by taking a poll of people and putting it at the point at which the majority of people believe it to occur. There is no science in that at all.

For religious people, when does a baby get it's soul? What is a soul? I would have to think that if we believe that people have souls and other creatures do not, then you would gain your soul when your brain is developed beyond the point of animals that do not have souls. Does your soul exist in the cerebellum? If a person is born whose brain is not developed adequately, do they still have a soul? If it has nothing to do with the brain, why do humans have souls and other animals do not have souls? If other animals have souls, do they go to Heaven or Hell? How do you differentiate good and bad in animals that act with instinct? For that matter, how can we judge or even know what is good and bad as human beings? People who act 3 standard deviations away from a mean behavior are considered bad? In many ways, this is how we do judge people. Drinking alcohol is acceptable because a vast majority of people do it. Smoking marijuana is bad because significantly less people do it, and it is not socially acceptable (because less people do it!). Each have severe issues if done in excess and very few consequences if done in moderation, but one is punishable by years in prison and if you don't do the other, you are considered a social outcast.

With many legal issues, we let the people on the extreme edges of the bell curves set our laws. They are the ones that are so morally outraged that they go to their congress-person and fight to have it turned into a law. Most of us are unaffected by the law, so we don't give a crap. We only fight when we are put into a situation in which the law directly affects us or people around us, or ends up being so far out the distribution function that we can't stand for it. It would be nice if people (journalists, congress, pastors, me, etc.) realized that there is not much that separates the vast majority of people in the US. We are all under a bunch of bell curves.

That, to me is interesting. As interesting as why I wear a towel when I walk to back to my locker and why the guy next to me brushes his hair in front of a mirror wearing nothing but back hair.

The Diary of a Crabby Scientist

Done!

Major Neglect

Not science, at work

Science, at home

Manning it up

First Balloon Launch of 2010

PD Issues

Motivation in the Crapper

Greetings from the Other Side

15 Years

UberBusy

The Last Week or So

Things That I Enjoy

Surfacing

On Ice

More Palindrome Days

Palindrome

Mid-Life Something

Movie Out

Christmas Post

Updates

Another Week

Five Minutes

Super Lame

In Euro

Anger

Global Warming

The glory of daylight savings time

Shot out of a cannon

NPR

Mike Doughty

Subaru

On Travel

Pandora Love

Mirror Images

Under Water

Crash!

Pre-Class Blurb

The End

To Do List

Paper One "Complete"

I Did It!

Happy Birthday!

Paper Length

Picnic Euphoria

Blueberries of Love

Done!

Fish Ponds and Dog Farts

10 ten simple activities i love

I work for an *ss H*le

Lance in Third

Some Kick-*ss Balloon Footage

No! Lance! No!

New Bike!

I'm Sorry Mom

In the Grips of the Tour

At Grammy's

A Fish Out of Water

Same Place as Last Week

Happy Birthday!

Day 2 of 20 Days of Travel

Singing the Post Doc Blues

Sunday Sunday

A Good Day

gnr

todo

Proposal Time

My Weekend

Why is my life so overwhelming?

A Very Sad Movie

Tenure!

May Already?

Credit

Last Chance Balloon

Work-Life Issues

I'm Alive

Dog Blog

Balloons and Rockets

LA Bitch

I work for an ss Hle