omly

Life has totally broadsided me. We came back from a brief trip to Canada, while Tab was visiting WI with her grandfather. Sunday crazybone called to see about interesting in seeing Stardust, which was really good. I am drowning in laundry, vegetables, and school supplies. The house is almost presentable now though. Research is going well.

I just realized that I am using/thinking of the command "grep" synonymously with the verb "grok".

Sorry that I haven't been on LJ much recently. I have been crazy busy. Brief recap:

• housewarming party with thanos73 for notanangel last friday
  
• dinner with thanos73, E, J and their friend M on saturday
  
• dinner with mom and Tab on sunday
  
• it's socktoberfest
  
• I am suddenly obsessed with the house being clean (this usually happens when I really should be doing other things)
  
• seminars & group meetings
  
• still fighting to get my software for work working smoothly. current issue: different shell types, can we use the same alias syntax? where is the .cshrc file that was supposed to be sent anyways? I have my data, but can't get it into text format until we get this resolved

So I have been in WI for 2 weeks now, just 2 more to go! I finally feel like I am understanding how to phrase my commands and edit the input files. This has meant learning a lot about both the specific program we are using here, and more general linux commands. I can't believe it took me this long to get where I am though. I have some basic models done, so now I need to get the more complicated ones and data processing started.

In non-research related thoughts, I still have abunch of stuff I want to do while I am here. I want to get the free zoo in Madison at some point. I may go to Lakeside Fibers at the very end of my trip depending how my fiber stash is running at that point. I need to mail some stuff home, but I will wait until after week 3 is done to do that. (astro_babe am I meeting you at some point?) Oh and the "dairy store" on campus has cheese curds in both "plain" and "dill and onion". cwellan, do you have a preference?

The MRS conference is this week and I have been running myself ragged. I am so jealous of the students here from other parts of the country/world who just get to do the conference without the regular day to day responsibilities. Since I paid the registration cost out of pocket I have been trying to get as much out of it as I could.

Overheard - Quote of the day (from the email newsletter sent out to registrants)
"Nano is big. It is not all hype."
- Tom Weber, Director, Division of Materials Research, NSF

( more specifics )

Ok that is my update for now. I should go back to my reactor homework for a bit before I pick up Tab from daycare.

To anyone who feels like I have been ignoring them recently (including the EOP board), I hope you know that that has not been my intent. I have just been stupendously busy, although most of it should be over with. If I haven't spent much social time with you recently leave me aline (here or elsewhere) as I have some time opening up all at once and I really miss so many of you.

I have my final in Probability and Statistics tomorrow. Think happy thoughts for me... Since the whole course was only 5 weeks long it went really fast and I don't know that I have absorbed all the information quite yet. I will be unavailable tonight or tomorrow between packing and studying.

And speaking of packing... We should be able to move in as of friday. A lot is packed right now, but there is still more to be done, and I want to wash all the sheets, blankets etc before we move.

The lab has been keeping me busy of course. I recently had a miniature break through, but my computation models have been crashing the operating system after about 3 days of computation, leaving me with no results. Hopefully this will be resolved soon. On the other hand though I am finally getting excited about my research for what amounts to the first time.

Adding to that I have not only my own literature search, but a new abstract assignment our advisor gave us. She did a search for "gold nanoparticles" and came up with 4000+ articles for us to split up. Fortunately kracktek noticed there were many duplicates for some reason. When the search was run again we found only 903. Divided among 6 students this worked out to about 150 articles each by the beginning of July. We need to read the abstracts, identify those relating to our research (group in general), give the relevant ones to those they pertain to, and write a literature review for the gold nanoparticle literature in our field. Oh and I need to write some something for our NSF/my funding.

*I am amused to note that LJ does not recognize nanoparticle as a word. It suggests "nonpolitical" or "unpoetical".

I thought it was pretty funny that I got a political one:

DEMOCRATS BUY MOST OF THE BOOKS THAT HAVE BEEN
BANNED; REPUBLICANS FORM CENSORSHIP COMMITTEES AND
READ THEM AS A GROUP.

In honor of Spring Break:

IF GOD HAD MEANT MAN TO SEE THE SUN RISE, HE
WOULD HAVE SCHEDULED IT FOR A LATER HOUR.

And the work I will have to during it:

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY LOOKING IN
THE WASTEBASKET FOR THE DIRECTIONS.

And some otherwise random quotes:

THE WISE MAN HAS THE POWER TO REASON AWAY
WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES.
- DOOBIE BROTHERS

And the return:

A FOOL CAN ASK MORE QUESTIONS THAN
A WISE MAN CAN ANSWER.

And finally just in time for the EOP meeting:

GOORD'S AXIOM: A MEETING IS AN EVENT AT WHICH
THE MINUTES ARE KEPT AND THE HOURS ARE LOST.

Gaussian is a molecular modeling program I installed at work today. In the output code there tends to be a quote or smart ass remark. Today for benzene, one of the first ones I ran I found the following quote:

Discoveries are often made by not following instructions,
by going off the main road, by trying the untried.
-- Frank Tyger

Just got out of group meeting a few minutes ago. The post-doc was giving a presentation on where he would like to go in his research. What I was struck by most was the fact how incredibly nasty one of the professors in our research group was. Okay, yes, this is graduate school and I consider it part of a professor's job to point out logical fallacies or over looked items. The sneering and nasty comments muttered under his breath were a little much though. I am so glad that man is not my adviser!

In other news I am apparently going to be one of the "lucky" grad students to have to teach two semesters this year. Originally the number of accepted students was planned to allow each student to teach for one semester of the year. I did mine last semester. Then a bunch more students apparently unexpectedly finished their thesis work. So there were not enough grad students to go around. Anyways, my adviser pulled me aside after group meeting to let me know that I would be working for one of her classes. (She only allows her research students to do TA work for her.) While yes I would appreciate the extra money, I was really looking forward to some time to establish my research free from TA duties.

Time Dilation!

So this morning I started to freak out because I had not heard back from an email I had sent. It had been about a week and a half so I was really worried. Then I went back and read their last email to see what they said then, only to discover that it was written only two days ago. So which is it a week and a half or two days?

My answer: why both! To the outside world only two days have passed, but internally I have been cramming so much into each day that they have been slowly stretching to accommodate all the things I need to do until I am ready to drop from exhaustion. Just think how much more productive we could all be if we could just master this control of time dilation. On second thought, nobody give my adviser the idea. I think I need a nap.