ALS recovery

I'm back from ALS now. That last day was just horrible. What with the beam downtime, and then when it came back at 3AM, I couldn't get the microscope aligned properly again. So I spent the next 6 hours fiddling and trying different things. I think the x-ray beam was off center somehow. I couldn't even get any intensity through at higher energies. And the guy to call for help had already worked the day shift for me, so he was getting his necessary sleep, and I had to fend for myself. At least it's over now.

I didn't get to go to bed afterwards, though. I had to check out of my hotel and head to the airport instead. I napped a bit in the terminal and on my flights, but you know how it's not the same when you're not sleeping in a bed. I didn't get home until 1AM, and after a quick shower and meal, I finally went to sleep at around 2AM. I slept until 1 in the afternoon yesterday, and I felt alot better. I also pigged out on food yesterday, because I hadn't been eating well out in California. I still don't feel 100% yet. Maybe in a day or two.

The ALS Brain Drain

Another long night at the ALS. Right now the x-ray beam is off for some reason. It shut off unexpectedly at 11:30. I've been sitting here waiting for them to start it up again, but it looks like the control room is waiting until 1AM (the regular refill time). I am dead tired from these long nights, and I didn't get much sleep during the day. I think I'll go take a walk around the synchrotron ring and try to wake up a bit.

from the ALS

I'm here at the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley now. Yes, I'm at another synchrotron facility. I hope to complete my "tour" by visiting the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon sometime after the New Year. It's just an opportunity to use each of these facilities and decide which one(s) is(are) most appropriate for my samples and the travel costs of visiting them 3-4 times a year. Unfortunately, I'm running the night shift...8pm-8am, which in DC time is 11pm-11am. I just started and hour and a half scan of my sample, so I gotta go run and eat something. I hear there's a Thai restaurant that's open 'til 1:30am. Let's hope so.

The System Works!

So I've been wanting to read The Name of the Rose for a long time. I've heard it's a really good book, and I kinda want to ease into Umberto Eco's themes and style before I tackle Foucault's Pendulum. But I've never started the book because it's chock full of Latin, and I don't know a lick of it. I learned my lesson after reading Lolita that if you can't understand a large portion of the book, you're gonna miss out on some plot development. There's a book called the Key to the Name of the Rose which has a glossary and translations of all Latin phrases, but neither ASU nor various public libraries had it. Well it turns out the Fairfax County Library system has a copy, but it's in a branch far away (well, too far away to be worth the effort). Plus it was checked out. But, not only was I able to put a hold on the book online, but they shipped it to the library branch just down the street from me. So I think I'll start reading it tonight or tomorrow.

I'm back in DC now, and it feels good to be home again. Gunner seems a whole lot bigger than before. Kelly's been making this special food for him full of protein and vitamins. I'm taking the morning off to do some laundry, pay bills, and rest for a bit, especially since I didn't get a weekend.

I am so sick of this place, being here for five days now. So this morning, since my scan looked to be going well, I took off and went to the beach. It's only a few miles south of the lab. Anyway, I found a nice comfy spot near the dunes and took a little nap. I felt a lot better afterwards, but now that I'm back on the beamline, my headache has returned. I'm getting good data, at least.

A month or two ago, Kelly signed up on MySpace, and sort of convinced/forced me to sign up too. But to be honest, I despise MySpace. It looks horrible, and it's full of spammers. Plus I already have a Blogger blog (obviously), and I just figured out how to use Picasa to create online photo albums.

However, I do see the value in using a social networking website. So my question is this...of the big three social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut), which would you recommend? I remember Facebook starting up when I was at Northwestern, but I didn't care about it at the time. Facebook also seems to be gaining popularity, especially among college students and professionals. Orkut, on the other hand, is run by Google, so there will most likely be future integration with Blogger and Picasa.

Anyways, any suggestions? I guess my decision is a balance between which website offers the features that I want most and which website the majority of my friends and colleagues use.

 

Another long day of collecting data at the NSLS. I was on my way back to the dorm around 10PM when I saw a herd of about seven deer along the side of the road. I decided to take advantage of the situation and got out and sat really still in the field with my camera. One deer came within 15 feet of me!

I probably say this everytime I'm at the synchrotron, but there's something in the water here that gives me a sore throat. Maybe it's in the air. I don't know. There was a blown fuse somewhere here today, and it smelled like smoke for about an hour. We're still waiting for the x-ray beam to come back online.

Today's the beginning of a five day stint at the synchrotron. I'll be here at the NSLS until October 1. I've done three days before, but never five. Luckily, I've got a colleague, Tom, here to help me out the first few days. But I miss home already, and Kelly and Gunner.

Right now I'm waiting for the x-ray beam to come back online. It's been down since 6AM this morning.

This weekend Kelly and I got fed up with the half-finished floor in our sunroom and did some remodeling. When we first moved in, the room was mostly carpeted, but a part of it was covered with some cracked and broken linoleum. The carpet was disgusting, so the home-owner agreed to rip it up, and agreed to just paint the concrete underneath. But the handyman didn't touch the linoleum because it wasn't in their agreement. Over the past few months, I've been trying to get the linoleum removed too, but the home-owner wanted to get some quotes, and the property manager was just sitting on his ass about it. So yesterday I went to Home Depot and bought a pry bar and rubber mallet, and Kelly and I went to town on that linoleum. We had about 1/3 bucket of paint left, and that was just barely enough to paint the rest of the concrete, but floor looks great now.

I subscribed to Napster after Kelly and I moved out to DC, and I've been pretty happy with it. Anyway, I thought I'd post a few new bands I've discovered that I really like.

Barcelona
Sarah Blasko

They're both kinda mellow, just to warn ya.

Last night Kelly and I watched two new TV shows, Kid Nation and FOX's bastardization of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Both were a bit disappointing. The original BBC version of Kitchen Nightmares was a really compelling show, and taught me things to watch out for when eating out. But FOX took the idea and produced it just like another Survivor-type reality show with quick cuts, moronic narration, and unnecessary captions. The sad part is that the content of FOX's premier was really interesting. It was the production that ruined it. Part of the heart of the show is Ramsay sitting down with the owner or head chef and explaining what exactly is wrong with their restaurant. But with all the quick cuts, we get the feeling that we are just watching sound bytes rather than a real conversation. There was no real feeling of progress while watching the show. Instead, we saw problems, conflict, and then success. In the BBC version, we get to see the restaurant getting better and working through their problems. I mean, look at that Italian meathead in the first episode...there is no way that vain bastard changed overnight to take the restaurant seriously, but that is exactly what the show presented. Bullshit!

And don't get me started on Kid Nation. I think they designed the show all wrong. Instead of testing the idea that kids could come up with a functioning society, they turned it into another Survivor clone, except instead of voting somebody off each week, somebody gets a $20K check each week.

On Sunday Kelly convinced me to run a 5K race for the Falls Church Education Foundation. I don't really enjoy running like Kelly does, but I thought it was something we could enjoy doing together. I even bought new shoes, since I didn't have real running shoes. It was pretty cold during the race, but Kelly and I did well. They put this killer hill in the middle of the race, but I was able to recover going down it. I surprised myself by finishing in 27:44, although timing was done by hand, not by computer chip timers. Kelly finished right behind me. I admit I had a good time while running, even though I sorta felt crappy soon after.

I'm a big fan of open source software, so I always try to use Firefox and Thunderbird whenever possible. However, when I got my new work laptop, I decided to try using Microsoft solutions (Internet Explorer 7 and Outlook 2007) instead, because they are supposed to be much improved by competition with Firefox and Thunderbird. But after about a month of struggling with Outlook to get it to do what I want it to do, and IE7's ugly and non-intuitive interface, I've decided to switch back. And I'm glad I did. Now I can edit my Google calendar from within my email program, and I got rid of the annoying security pop up every time I access my NRL email. Outlook has this fancy-ass contacts system, and I could never access or organize it very easily. Thunderbird has a much simpler contacts system. And my biggest Outlook complaint of all...I couldn't even search my email! I think Outlook was trying to index all the email on the NRL mail servers! The only bad thing about Thunderbird is that it doesn't read all my RSS feeds properly, but at least I can organize them the way I want, unlike Outlook. As for Firefox, it has such a simpler user interface than IE7, and looks better too. I don't know why everybody just doesn't switch.

My car just passed 100,000 miles, so I took it into the Nissan dealership yesterday for a tune-up. It cost me $600, but they did do alot of stuff. It's all things that I could do myself, but I just don't have the time to take care of it all. It took them three hours, but it would have taken me at least one whole day to do it all. Anyway, they also gave me a list of things that should be fixed, which is good to have. And they gave me a free Nissan Versa to drive for the day.

I hope everybody had a great Labor Day weekend. Kelly and I rented a cabin from the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club in southern Pennsylvania. It seemed so far away, but it was only like a two hour drive. Gunner had a blast running around the forest. I would post pictures, but Gunner chewed up the power cord for my wireless router on Thursday. Luckily I had a backup router, so at least we can connect Kelly's PC online.

Another week, another weekend. Time seems to be just flying by. Days pass way to quickly at work. And Gunner is as feisty as ever. We took him to the Vienna dog park and he had a blast chasing and being chased by other dogs. Kelly and I try to spend a lot of time with him during the weekends to make up for working so much during the week. When we walk him, we try to go by a playground (there are a lot of them out here) so he can run around. He even goes down the slides on his own! We could never get Ed to do that.

Kelly and I saw Superbad today. It was really funny, in a dry, subtle sort of way. The way the characters interact with each other and the things they say are pretty hilarious. We saw it in this really old multiplex theater that's close to our house. I doesn't have stadium seating, or even cupholders in the seats. And the seats are partially leather, so they squeak every now and then. But the awesome thing is that nobody goes there, so it's less stressful for us, which is important to us nowadays.

There are too many bugs here!

Windows Vista still sucks, but my data turns out to be fine. I have to just remember to turn off the thumbnail view before I open my data directory. Vista Explorer still crashes when I try to drag and drop files, though.

Let me just state or the record that Windows Vista sucks, Sucks, SUCKS! It is slowly corruping my TEM data every time it tries to "index" my files. Afterwards, I can't open or delete them!

It's been a hectic few days, so I'm very glad the weekend is here. In grad school I only had to worry about one research project. At NRL I'm working on three different projects! Then on Thursday the tread came off my front passenger tire while I was driving on the beltway. Both my front tires were almost bald, and the DC freeway system is not in the best of conditions. The tire still holds air; it's just missing the tread. But when the tread came off it ripped everything out of my wheel well, including the wires to one of my side blinkers and the valve to my windshield wiper fluid tank. You can imagine my initial panic when I pull over and see a whole bunch of liquid pouring out of my car. I stopped by a tire place in Alexandria yesterday and got a pair of new tires, but that set me back almost $300.

Today Kelly and I went and saw the Simpson's Movie. It was actually funny. It wasn't as good as one of the classic Simpson episodes, but it was much better than recent Simpson episodes.

I finally got my office on Thursday. Now somebody else is in limbo for a while, but I'm all set. I moved all my stuff in, but I'm still waiting on my new computer. I guess it had to be reordered on Wednesday because the initial order did not go through for some reason. The guy said he was going to get overnight delivery, but I haven't heard anything about it yet (although I was busy on the FIB all day Friday).

The weather has been really nice here lately. Sunny and not to humid or hot. So much more comfortable now than in AZ.

I'm going to apply for beamtime at the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I was checking out the website, when I found the online synchrotron status webpage. It seems someone in Canada really likes Star Trek.

I met up with my friend William and his girlfriend yesterday. We ate at a good Ethiopian restaurant in Georgetown. It was nice to catch up, especially since he's moving to Ohio soon. And, as per his request, here's a picture of our new backyard. Yes, it is frickin' huge.

Kelly and I had a great day today. This morning we took Gunner to Great Falls National Park on the Potomac and walked him around. The falls are really cool, and there are miles of trails to explore. Then we went and got sushi for lunch at this place in downtown Falls Church. Then we went and got library cards and the regional public library that's within walking distance from our house. It was a lot of fun spending time with Kelly, and decompressing from a stressful week. I really like where we live now, and there are lots of things nearby that weren't that convenient in AZ. Although now there are things that aren't nearby, like good Mexican food.

Kelly and I met up with Eulynn and Victor this weekend in DC. We ate at this awesome Vietnamese restaurant in Georgetown. Then we walked around a bit and ended up at a bar called Brickskeller that has like a thousand different kinds of beer from all around the world. It was a lot of fun, but we stayed out late and were very tired by the time we got home.

We also got our new VA drivers licenses. They look so much crappier than AZ drivers licenses, and neither of us are happy with our pictures. We did a bunch of shopping too, now that I've been paid, so our house looks a bit more organized. Now that that's over, we don't have to waste our weekends running errands or unpacking.

Happy 4th everybody! This week both Kelly and I started work. NRL looks like most military bases I've seen (I have a few uncles in the armed forces, so I've seen my fair share of military bases). I'd post a picture, but there are no cameras allowed on-site. I'm not even supposed to bring my laptop in. But I have to bring it in to work until my new computer arrives (I'm getting a new Sony Vaio laptop with a docking station, wireless keyboard and mouse, and a 24" LCD monitor). I don't even have an office yet until some science director guy gets back from vacation next week to officially assign me one. The weirdest thing so far is that most of the administrative staff leaves at 3PM every day. And I still have personal stuff to do to get us fully settled in here, like registering our cars in Virginia, and getting insurance policies. Hopefully I'll have most of that miscellanea done by the start of next week.

Sorry for not posting in a while, but an awful lot has happened in the last two weeks. Needless to say, Kelly and I are now residing in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington DC. We drove both our cars from Arizona to here over five days, and I don't know if I ever want to do that again. We've been staying in an empty house, but the movers will show up tomorrow morning with all our stuff. We have been pretty busy cleaning up the place. I guess the owners moved out two days before we arrived and say they didn't have time to clean up the place. The carpets hadn't been cleaned and the walls were all dirty. And the owners had some sort of shaggy dog because there is wiry gray dog hair everywhere! But we've gotten it looking pretty presentable by now. Plus a handyman showed up yesterday to rip up the filthy carpet in the sunroom and replaced it with a clean, painted cement floor.

This article makes me mad. People should not be punished for trying to use alternative energy sources.

There's an awesome Wolfgang Tillmans exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC.

Thursday I had some free time in the afternoon, so I went over to Woodlawn Plantation, which was right across the street from my hotel. The grounds were very well-tended, and aside from the main house, there's also a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the property.


Next to the mansion house there was a tiny pool with tons of tadpoles in it.


There were also a few Southern Magnolia trees on the property. I didn't realize that the magnolia was a tree and not a bush. They were just beginning to bloom, but only near the tops of the trees.

I saw six homes today. This is the one that sounded good to me, so I made plans to see it first in the morning. I also stopped by again later in the afternoon, after my expectations had been calibrated, and I decided to apply for it. It is smaller than the home we are renting now, but compared to other homes in the area, the price for the size is a great value.

Pros:

• large yard (and it's fully fenced)
  
• semi hidden from street (although that slope might be trouble for our cars in the winter)
• largest living room and laundry room I've seen all day
  
• has a nice sunroom extension in back
• has large storage shed in back (in very good condition)
• Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Starbucks, and video rental store in walking distance down the street
• very near Metro station, and right on bus line (which goes to Metro station)
• just a few miles south of Tysons Corner malls
• backs up to Pimmet Run creek, so only neighbors on the right and left
• very close to major freeways (495 beltway and 66)
  

Cons:

• small kitchen
• small bathroom with no toiletries storage
• the two bedrooms combined are about the size of our current bedroom
• one lane parking along side of house (no garage)
• the slopes in the front and back yards might make mowing the lawns a pain
  

I'm blogging from my hotel in Mount Vernon, Virginia. According to internet reviews, this place is supposed to be a shithole, but I guess the owners have remodeled it over the past two years, and I think it's not that bad. My room is actually pretty nice, if small. I was surprised to walk into the place and see this huge courtyard in the middle, so I thought I'd post a picture. The hotel has free wireless, as you can probably guess.

Early tomorrow I'm meeting up with a realtor to see the rental home in Falls Church I like the most, then I'll head over to Fairfax and check out this other place. I'll be meeting up with another realtor in the afternoon. However, if the first home turns out as good as it looks on the internet, I may not have to. We'll see, and I'll keep y'all posted.

I keep forgetting to blog about camping Memorial Day weekend. It was basically Kelly's and my last chance to camp in AZ before we move (less than a month away!!). We went with Kelly's parents, her brother, Ed, and a family friend, to a place we know just north of Strawberry on the Mogollon Rim. I think Strawberry is one of my favorite Rim towns, and I have many good memories from there. It was also Gunner's first time camping, and I think he had a blast.

Anyway, there were plenty of animals, so I got a chance to test out the macro mode on my camera.

I was really excited to get a new cell phone, and I decided to go with the LG Chocolate over the Motorola KRZR. Well, I quickly discovered that mp3 ringtones for my phone cost $2.99 apiece! I grumbled enough paying $1.50 for a polyphonic ringtone, but $3 is just too much. So I spent a bit of time finding a workaround to get my own ringtones on the phone. I quickly discovered a piece of software called BitPIM that will access contacts, calendars, messages, and ringtones on a large assortment of cell phones, including the Chocolate. However, to use BitPIM you need a special USB cable to connect to the phone. The cable itself costs $20, but it comes included with a headset in the Verizon Media Essentials Kit for $30. I found the kit on eBay for cheaper.

So after about a week I had everything I needed. BitPIM automatically recognized my phone. But when I click on the "Get Phone Data" button, I got an error stating the file directories on the phone where not accessible. After some internet searching, I found out that I have version 6 of the Chocolate software. BitPIM only works with version 4. An upcoming version of BitPIM will work with version 5, but version 6 is locked down tight. Well, at least I can use the USB cable to transfer mp3s to my phone just to listen to them, but to be honest, the Chocolate is not better than a dedicated mp3 player.

But wait, there's another option. I actually tried this before I shelled out any money for the Music Essentials Kit. You can send text messages to any verizon phone by email! The address is just [phonenumber]@vzwpix.com (remember to include the area code in the phone number). It also allows you to transfer pictures, audio, and video files this way. So I tried it by sending myself a couple of very short (30 seconds or less) mp3 files. My phone received the messages right away, and allowed me to save the audio as a ringtone, but the audio sounded horrible! It appears that somewhere along the way, the mp3 files were converted to crappy qcp files (don't ask me what those are!). So I gave up on that option right away and went ahead with the BitPIM method.

After BitPIM failed with the Chocolate, I thought about the email method again. QCP seems to be more of a container format than an actual encoding, so I thought to myself, "Why not just change .mp3 to .qcp on the file name and try that?" I mean, the phone already plays mp3s, so I just have to get the file to my phone without it being downconverted. As a qcp file, it should pass through unaltered to the phone. And what do you know? It works!

OK, so here's how to get free ringtones on a locked-down LG Chocolate:

1. Create a short mp3 file (about 30 seconds at 96kpbs). I think it needs to be less than 350 kb.

2. Open the folder on your PC containing the new mp3 file. Go to Tools > Folder Options..., select the View tab and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". This makes the ".mp3" part of the filename visible.

3. Change the file extension from ".mp3" to ".qcp"

4. Attach the qcp file to an email sent to [yourphonenumber]@vzwpix.com

5. Once you receive the message on your phone, select "Options" and then "Set as Ringtone". Voila!

A lot has happened in the past few days! I flew to Chicago to give a geology colloquium talk at Northwestern. Then Kelly, her family, the dogs, and I hiked to the Jug for Mother's Day. Then just yesterday I got a brand new cell phone.

The weather was quite nice in Evanston. I guess it was during those two or three weeks of Spring every year. But it was sunny in the mid-60s, with only a little bit of wind. My talk went well. I just gave basically the same talk that I did for my Carnegie interview, but without the proposal stuff and a bit more general explanation. I also brought samples of my cherts to pass around, which I think the audience liked. I didn't have a lot of free time, though. I arrived Thursday night, hung out in the geology department and met people on Friday, then left Saturday morning. But I did have some time to meet up with Eric Singley for some whiskey at a local Evanston bar. Eric's a pretty cool guy. I never really hung out with him that much as an undergrad, but I should have.

Then on Sunday we all hiked to the Jug. There was water flowing this time of year, but it was a bit lower than when Kelly and I went last Spring. Ed wussed out a bit after we got to the water, so Jace and Kelly's dad stayed behind while Kelly, Kelly's mom, and I went to the swimming pools. Gunner went with us and had to swim for the first time ever in his life. He looked pretty clumsy and made tons of splashing, but I think he had a good time. But both he and Ed did not like the hike out. By then it was hot and the trail was burning Gunner's feet. Ed also got overheated and he was wheezing like a steam engine. Jace and Kelly's mom had to carry Ed for a little while, and I carried Gunner for a little bit. They were both out of it for the next few days. They both seem back to normal today, though.

I'm having a great time reading The God Delusion. It was a bit boring in the middle when Dawkins was talking about evolution of religion, why the anthropic principle doesn't prove God's existence, and why God's supposed omnipotence and omnipresence also implies that he doesn't exist. But now he's talking about morality, which is really interesting. I've always been told that an atheistic society will decline into immorality. Dawkins does a very good job of showing the separation of morality and religion, and how morality and ethics are beneficial (evolutionarily-speaking). One way he puts it is to think about how morals and ethics have changed over time, leading to more gender and racial equality. But if morality is based on religion, which is based on a document (or set of documents) that hasn't changed in a couple thousand years, morality shouldn't change over time. This change occurs because religion and morality are separate sets of memes.

I just finished reading a great section about something I've come across as a scientist, and I've seen it from other scientists, even at conferences. Dawkins tells the story of Kurt Wise, who runs the Center for Origins Research. Kurt was set to become an outstanding geologist. He got his graduate degree from Harvard under Stephen Jay Gould. But Kurt was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, and realized that there were contradictions between the Bible and what he studied at graduate school. Fed up with the internal conflict, he sat down with his Bible and cut out (with a pair of scissors) all the passages that disagree with the current scientific worldview. Needless to say his Bible was a shambles afterwards. At that point he made a choice, either "Science" or God, and he chose God...

"It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science."

He could have taken the Bible as an allegory or symbolic text, as many do. But this is what fundamentalism does to people. It causes people to ignore scientific evidence. It causes people to want to be dumb!

Sometimes Gunner's cute facial expressions remind me of Lil' Brudder.

It appears that geologist have finally discovered kryptonite...Yes, you heard right.

It's not really a glowing green mineral, but it has almost the same chemical formula given in the most recent Superman movie. The real mineral name will be jadarite, named after the town in Serbia nearby where it was discovered.

I wonder what the mineral name for dilithium crystals would be?

So I've been reading this Richard Dawkins book, The God Delusion. Kelly started reading it and recommended it to me. I really like the book so far. It's basically a book about why everybody should be atheists, or putting it another way, believing in a personal god is just downright silly. I don't consider it a detailed critique of religion...more like a common sense "when you really think about it" kind of book. For example, Dawkins talks about the idea of "Religion" and "Science" being separate but equal, and neither can ask or answer questions about the other. Dawkins points out that this is a line of reasoning to pacify or pander to religious people, and it doesn't work in practice. If there really was a way to scientifically prove that a diety exists, or that miracles happen, or that prayer works, you can be absolutely sure that religious people would jump on it. And if science shows that prayer doesn't work (a test study actually showed that people were worse off if they were prayed for!!!), then religious people claim that Science can't test Religion. In theory, it sounds like a great mantra for dealing with controversial Science vs. Religion questions, but in practice nobody follows it.

I could go on, but you get the picture. The book looks at some basic concepts about the idea of God from a practical viewpoint. I've said for a long time that religion always boiled down to pure faith. You either believe or don't believe and there will never be enough evidence to suggest one option over the other. I've always thought that this makes a person's religion more important and special, because it takes a conscious decision. I think that Dawkins tries to make the same case, but then takes it one step further by saying that if it really does boil down to faith, then why bother! He also mentions that you can't force faith. If you don't believe in something, then all the church in the world won't get you into heaven, so why bother.

Whether you agree with the book or not, it definitely makes you think. Several parts have resonated with ideas I've come up with on my own, but I've never really taken them seriously before. I'd strongly recommend it to anybody, religious or not.

The only problem I've found so far it Dawkins' claim that God must be a part of the universe. If he is, then he must be within the realm of scientific exploration. But I'm pretty sure that all Christians believe that God is external to the physical universe (or else how could He create it?)

I also recommend reading the introduction to Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. In that chapter he explains how he changed from a fundamentalist Christian into a full-fledged athiest because he became a Biblical exegesis scholar (studying and translating the original manuscripts, which are actually copies of copies of copies, etc.). The more he studied the original manuscripts the more he became convinced that the book we know of as the Bible is not really the "Word of God" as we are told . It's a fascinating read.

New White Stripes! Fuck Yeah!!!

http://jasper.webvomit.com/?p=1061

I read an interesting article about Lord Kelvin's 1862 calculation of the age of the earth. Assuming that the Earth is just a cooling ball of rock, he could figure out how long it took to cool from the melting temperature of rocks (about 3000 degrees C) to the current heat flux at the surface. He calculated that the Earth was about 100 million years old (and no more than 400 million years old). Of course, all the geologists at that time completely disagreed with that number, although they had no way of figuring out absolute age on their own. Then about 40 years later, once radioactive elements were discovered (and specifically that radioactivity can generate heat), the geologists figured out where Lord Kelvin went wrong. Kelvin assumed there were no internal heat sources in the Earth, and if there were, the Earth would be much older. It only takes about a 10 km layer of granite with a normal concentration of radioactive elements to account for the current heat flux of the Earth.

I never understood this explanation. I didn't believe that there is enough radioactivity to compensate for the Earth's heat flux. If so, I should be flooded with radiation all the time. Well, in this article I read, the author showed that radioactivity doesn't actually account for the Earth's heat flux. Obviously, there isn't a 10 km layer of granite covering the surface of the Earth. And if you include radioactivity into Lord Kelvin's calculations, it only increases the age of the Earth by about 50 million years! Yes, radioactivity is a source of internal heat, but it is not that large. But geologist at the time were so excited to prove the Earth was so much older than Lord Kelvin said, they didn't worry about actually calculating it. And this "myth" has been passed down the years.

What really explains the age of the Earth is convection. Convection of the mantle transports heat from the core to the crust without diffusion. Back in the day, one of Lord Kelvin's students, John Perry, modified his mentor's calculations to include convection, and got an age of around 2.2 billion years (much closer to the actual age of 4.6 billion years). But this solution was never picked up by geologists because (A) radioactivity was a much higher-profile topic, (B) it was considered just a squabble between physicists, and (C) it makes a much less entertaining story.

It looks like ASU has deleted my AFS space, which included a my homepage and some image files. I'm pretty sure I have saved copies of all of those, but it sucks that they just deleted everything without telling me first. I know I'm not a student anymore, so they don't have to make webspace available to me, but at least let me so that I can save everything.

I haven't posted in a while, and a lot has happened. I've been pretty busy with my classes and getting lectures/labs together. But I've also accepted a postdoc offer. I'll be working at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., starting this summer. It will last for two to three years. During that time, I'll be looking at really old organic matter trapped in meteorites, interplanetary dust particles, and cometary material.

It's Spring Break for me right now. But it's not all fun in the sun. Although I have a break in teaching, I still have plenty of work to do. And for once I'm not going to LPSC for Spring Break.

Also, check out new pictures of our puppy on his own blog.

The future we live in is so frickin' awesome! We can already become virtual rock stars by playing Guitar Hero. Now I can download movies directly to my TiVo from Amazon.com! It's sort of like pay-per-view, but I can order movies on Amazon in the morning while I'm working, and they'll be finished downloading to the TiVo by that evening. Cox PPV sucks balls. There are only four or five options at a time, and I have to fiddle with both the Cox and TiVo remotes to purchase a movie. The Amazon/TiVo combo is more like the ideal television service--instantaneous on demand. It's just not instantaneous right now because you have to download the show.

Let me explain what would be the ultimate television service. I want to pay a single monthly fee, just like I do now for cable TV. But instead of constantly-running "channels", I want just a list of programming. Then I select the program and the episode I want to see, and it starts playing. TiVo sort of solves this problem halfway, by recording episodes for me, but I have to wait until they have aired to have the "instantaneous" effect I'm looking for. But movies are a different story. I have to be vigilant to make sure the movies I want to see are recorded. TiVo helps by having automatic wishlists, but the movie still has to air sometime. It's far from "on demand" for movies. And I would rather not have to leave the house and go to the rental store (which probably doesn't have it anyway!) to see the movie I want. Of course, rentals are per movie, not a flat monthly fee (although that is starting to change).

I've been offered a postdoc fellowship at Carnegie. This is a pretty big opportunity for me, but I'm waiting until I hear about my NRC application before I make a decision.

Well, I'm back from Washington DC. My interview at Carnegie went well, I think. Several people were very excited about my seminar talk, so that's a good sign. The bad thing is that three of the five people on the committee were gone, and you know it's always good if the important people can but a face to a name on paper. But I think I met with enough people that will give a "good word" for me to the other committee members. We'll see next month if I did well enough and impressed the right people.

Many of you know I took the red-eye in on Thursday night and the red-eye back on Friday night. I have to admit that it's not that bad, especially if you don't sleep the whole night through on a regular basis. I arrived in DC at 7AM and had a few hours to eat breakfast and get to Carnegie for my talk at 11AM. I got enough sleep on the flight to DC and had a big cup of chai tea latte so I was pretty awake for my talk. I don't think taking the red-eye flight diminished my performance any. By the way, the chai was from a DC bookstore chain named Politics and Prose, and it was weird because it wasn't sweet like Starbuck's chai latte. Instead it was really spicy. It's probably more what chai latte is supposed to taste like. Anyways, I didn't start to crash until about 4PM, which was ok because most of the major interviewing sessions were over by then. By then I was just chatting to a few of the other postdocs until "Beer Time" at 5:30 PM. At 6PM I got a ride to the nearest Metro station and headed back to the airport.

Looking back, I would probably do it again, but maybe upgrade to first class on the longer flights for better sleep. I didn't sleep well on the way home because I couldn't get comfortable, even though I was more tired. But then it didn't matter if I slept well because I was going home. I also recommend a direct nonstop flight for maximum sleep time. Or if nonstop is not available (like in my case) choose a connection that if furthest away from you or your destination. I had a number of possible connections, like Houston or Atlanta, but I decided to go through Las Vegas, even though it was going away from DC at first, because then I would have a nice four hour flight on which to sleep.

Gunner must he hitting his "terrible twos" because he's started acting up big time. It's very sudden because all weekend he was as sweet as can be. But yesterday he peed in the house four times, and it seems mostly because he wasn't getting attention. One of those times was on the bed almost right in my face. Needless to say I was pretty pissed at that. He's also starting to growl when someone wakes him up or messes with his food. I guess he's trying to assert his dominance, but he has no idea what kind of game he's playing. If he's taking it up a notch, I'll take it up two. Get ready for the bitch slap, Gunner!

We took the dogs to Bartlett Lake yesterday. There was barely anybody there, so we let the puppies off the leash. They had a great time, although Gunner thought the water was too cold.

Don't cross the street, but it's OK to ROCK OUT! The cool thing about this crosswalk sign is that they didn't just use electrical tape to block out the two middle fingers. They actually made small triangular plugs to fill in the holes in the mesh!

It's taken me a while (since I don't have much free time), but today as I was grading geology labs I finished the final sound check for my annual "Best of" mixtape. I thought I'd post the track list here. Since I ripped my CD collection to my hard drive this year, I've merged my annual "Best of" and "Downloaded" mixes into one comprehensive list. So this year's "Best of" includes music I've purchased and songs I've downloaded. Because of that, I'm adding the disclaimer that I don't recommend purchasing CDs from all of these artists, only most of them.

Best of 2006
Disc 1

1. Mogwai - Auto Rock
   
2. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Life
   
3. Pistolita - Panic
   
4. The Oohlahs - Small Parts
   
5. Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye
   
6. Built to Spill - Goin' Against Your Mind
   
7. Giant Drag - Wicked Game
   
8. Wolfmother - Mind's Eye
   
9. Brand New - Limousine
   
10. Jesu - Silver
    
11. Moneen - Don't Ever Tell Locke What He Can't Do
    
12. Audioslave - Moth
    
13. Catfish Haven - Madelin
    
14. My Morning Jacket - Mahgeetah (live)
    

Disk 2

1. Band of Horses - The Funeral
   
2. Mew - The Zookeeper's Boy
   
3. Muse - Starlight
   
4. MSTRKRFT - Easy Love
   
5. Mylo - Otto's Journey
   
6. Weird Al Yankovic - White & Nerdy
   
7. Lady Sovereign - Hoodie
   
8. The Sounds - Queen of Apology (Patrick Stump Remix)
   
9. Evermore - It's Too Late
   
10. The Juliana Theory - Into the Dark
    
11. Rodrigo y Gabriela - Diablo Rojo
    
12. Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - Rise Up With Fists!
    
13. The Blow - Parentheses
    
14. The Grates - Nothing Sir
    
15. The Stills - She's Walking Out
    
16. Ben Folds - Bitches Ain't Shit
    
17. The Dresden Dolls - Sing
    
18. My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade
    
19. Pistolita - Beni Accident
    

Oh, and that whole Super Bowl thing...I really didn't see much of it. I was too busy creating the first exam for my geology 101 classes. I didn't realize how long that takes. I don't really care about football that much anyway.

Most horror movies don't scare me that much. They may make me jump out of my seat a few times, but I don't get a deep-seated fear or anything. The last movie that really scared me was Signs, and a lot of that was how well-made the movie was. This weekend Kelly and I rented The Descent, which really freaked both of us out. The monsters don't even show up until halfway through the movie, but when they did, Kelly actually screamed out loud. I would definitely recommend the movie to horror fans, but it does get a bit cliche in the second half of the movie.

I bought a new CD last week from a new band, Ratatat. It's just two guys with electric guitars and a drum machine (no vocals), and it sounds just as cool as you think. You can hear some of their songs on their myspace page.

Thank goodness for Friday. I get to sleep in a bit. Friday's also my day to catch up on all the non-class-related work I need to do.

Gunner's getting big, and he's also getting rowdy. Here's one of the few times that he's sweet:

We had a sudden frost in early January that killed all the ficus and bougainvillea plants. I took this picture in the early morning after the sprinklers went off and covered the grass with a thick layer of ice.

Still teaching, and still exhausted. Nothing much new to report. I'm just chugging along. I thought finishing up my dissertation and defending was hectic, but nowadays I have almost no free time at all. That and the lack of good sleep has made my patience wear thin.

I'm starting to doubt my teaching now. I've started to get those "will this be on the test" questions, which usually means the students are feeling overwhelmed. I'm probably going to try to change things up a bit. Part of it is also my expectations of the students may be too high. As far as I know, they are all non-geology-majors. But I don't want to just dumb things down for them. I think I need to go slower and spend more time explaining the core ideas instead of trying to cover everything in the book.

I am freakin' exhausted! This was the first week of teaching, and even though I had Monday off, I'm still wiped out. It's a combination of creating all my lecture and lab content from scratch, getting up at 5AM for my 7AM class, and having to get up every 3 hours or so at night to let the new puppy outside to pee. Gunner's getting better at holding it, but he still pees in the house. The actual teaching is the easy part.

Fridays are my free day, so I slept in until almost 8. That was nice, but I need to work on my NRC proposal, due at the end of the month. I've got no time to relax.

I'm also getting into a bit of a financial crunch right now. You see, ASU cut me off from my GSRP grant once I graduated, so I haven't seen any GSRP income since the last week of November. I still get my little supplemental checks from Tom's grant, though, but they don't nearly cover two months of bills plus a trip to London. I've been pretty thrifty in January. I haven't withdrawn any money or used my debit card since we got back from London, but my bank account is steadily drying up. I've already asked Kelly to pay the whole electricity bill this month, and I just got notice today that my rent check for this month bounced (I had hoped it would go through before the other bills). I'm expecting a small reimbursement for my trip to Washington DC, but other than that, I don't get paid for teaching until February 2. I just need to scrape by until then.

I'm in Washington DC right now, for postdoc visits. Today I was at the Naval Research Laboratory, and tomorrow I'll be at the Carnegie Institution. I haven't had much time to relax until now, and luckily the hotel has free wireless.

Our new American Bulldog puppy, Gunner, has been such a handful this past week. But he's so cute!

British Natural History Museum:

Sexy malachite! Of course it's from Arizona.

Extinct dodo birds. It's sobering to think that we killed all these fuckers off just for fun.

Cool escalator!


Ah, Bradysaurus... an early reptile that lived about 250 million years ago.

Big Ben, right near Westminster Abbey and Parliament.

Kelly in front of Westminster Abbey. Can you spot her?

Crazy medieval chess set at the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone at the British Museum

Happy New Year, Everybody! Kelly and I are back from London, and now we have a new family member. There are some pictures on Kelly's blog, and I'll post some later this week.

Well, that time has come again. Merry Christmas everybody!

Kelly and I are preparing to head off to London this afternoon. I'm pretty psyched about it all.

Yesterday I finished a web-friendly PDF of my dissertation, but it's 18 MB, so I have to figure out how I'm going to put it online. ASU only lets me have 10 MB, and I've already used most of that up. That's also not a very friendly size for email either. Hmmm.

Since I'm working on getting a good job/postdoc, I figure my crappy homepage should be updated to look a bit more professional. I liked how my blog turned out, so I copied that style, and I think the results look pretty good.

I think I've got the blog looking the way I want it to. I need to futz around with the sidebar elements somewhat. But unfortunately, it doesn't look right in Internet Explorer. I don't know what the problem is yet.

EDIT: Fixed it! I had to add an extra float property. For some reason IE7 assigned a float:right to the main content, so it moved when the window was resized. Now it doesn't because I added a float:left, so everything sticks to the left side of the window.

Pardon my dust but the new Blogger setup disagrees quite strongly with my very old layout. It will take me a little while to recreate it with all the new web doodads.

AGU was good. My talk was poorly attended since it was in the "mixed-bag" session, but I did get a few questions from informed parties. The talk before mine was about Permian polar forests, and the one after was about Humpback whales. But the main purpose of the meeting was to talk to certain individuals and make contacts for my future postdocs. That went well. Now I'm back working frantically to make sure my proposal is complete this week. I'm also working on finalizing my adjunct teaching position at Chandler-Gilbert Community College for the spring.

My friend Lisa gave me a copy of Guitar Hero II for Christmas. It is frickin' awesome! There's some really good songs on there. Kelly and I are still working through it. Thanks Lisa!

Kelly and I watched the hackiest movie ever: Moving Violations. This 1985 gem stars not Bill Murray but his brother John Murray. And not Stacey Keach but his son James Keach. And Marty McFly's whiny sister. And the "where's the beef?" lady. And Jennifer Tilly playing what appears to be a mentally retarded NASA scientist. Oh, and if you look closely, you can spot Don Cheadle in a brief scene as a drive-thru employee. Did I mention the movie is about traffic school?

I turned in my manuscript to the bookstore for binding. And extra copies to my dad for binding. See, my dad knows the guy who does thesis binding for ASU, so I can get a discount on extra copies by going directly through him, bypassing the ASU bookstore. I also paid the extra fee for copyright, so I can publish my own copies later if I see fit. So I think that's it. I'm done.

I gotta get my AGU talk finished, though.

I've had this song stuck in my head ever since I heard it--"Parentheses" by The Blow. It's not the usual kind of song that I like, but I think the lyrics are sweet. My favorite lines:

If something in the deli aisle
Makes you cry
Of course I'll put my arms around you and walk you outside
Through the sliding doors
Why would I mind?

Things have been busy again, with finishing dissertation revisions and preparing my talk for AGU. Tom wanted all of us to give practice talks today, so I threw together a presentation this morning. It helps that I just gave a major presentation on this stuff not too long ago (my defense), but I had to condense a 40 min talk into 10 min. Actually it wasn't so bad because I posed the question in a new light. Tom and everybody seemed to like it though. Usually I have to reorganize everything, but this time I only have to add a couple slides.

In other news, Tom gave the OK on my revisions yesterday. I hope to get the Graduate Dean's signature on my dissertation tomorrow, so I can start printing out copies for binding!

I never thought I would have to say this, but a bird shit on my laptop...while it was in my house!

My laptop and all my dissertation-related stuff was on the kitchen table, and I guess Jace left the back screen door and Ed's doggy door wide open when he left. So in the few hours while nobody was home a bird must have flown in and out. There was also shit on the sink, the refrigerator, the clean dishes in the drying rack, and one of the kitchen chairs.

I finished A Million Little Pieces last week, but I've been so busy working on revisions that I haven't blogged about it. It's a pretty good story, and I think it's important for this day and age, because the main character pretty much takes responsibility for his addictions. It is his choice to use drugs or alcohol or whatever, instead of a disease or uncontrollable urge. He chooses not to continue in his addictions instead of relying on what he sees as other harmless addictions like food or religion or AA. I think that's a great message.

My only beef with the book, and Kelly and I argue about this, is the writing style. It is pretty simplistic and repetitive, kind of like Hemingway. I hate that style, but I have to admit that it fits the content of the book really well. So I see it as a necessary evil.

Anyway, I would recommend the book to others. To bad it has that Oprah stigma around it now.

Now I re-reading an old book from my youth. It's sort of a retelling of part of the Arthurian legend that I remember liking. Now I'm not so sure. Actually, I'm just tired of seeing it on my shelf, so I'm reading it one last time before I sell it. It should be a pretty quick read.

I sort of dropped off the face of the earth this week. After coming back from Seattle, I didn't feel like doing anything, so I didn't. Plus I came down with a cold. But I'm starting to feel better today. I've got lots to take care of now. First and foremost are dissertation revisions. I need to complete those and get all the required signatures by the end of the month.

Here's a tank full of rockfish, I think. 

We went to the Seattle Aquarium. The otters there were really cool (as usual). They had both river otters and sea otters, like this one. After the aquarium, we walked around Pike's Market, which is one of my favorite places in Seattle. There's just so much good food there, even though it's sorta touristy. 

A nice mossy tree in Discovery Park. 

The day after my defense (I passed!) Kelly and I took off for Seattle to visit Beth and just relax for a weekend. It was rainy and cold, but not too bad. 

Less than an hour till my defense. I'm nervous as hell, but I think I'm ready.

I gave a second practice talk yesterday. It went much better, and even with some stammering it was only 42 minutes. So all I have to do it practice and get it down.

By the way, if anyone is interested in getting TiVo, you can get an older model for free with the purchase of a service plan directly from the manufacturer. This is how I got my free TiVo, but I was able to get the lifetime plan, which they don't offer anymore because TiVo lost so much money on those plans. The only problem with the older model is that it needs a USB adapter to connect to a home network, and it requires a phone line for initial setup. But after that all communications can be made over the internet.

I just gave a practice defense talk. I basically blew it. I didn't even get past the first slide before my mind went blank. I guess it doesn't help that I finished the talk last night at 11:30 and I only went through it once this morning. But, since I sucked so hard, Tom and everybody helped out alot with organization and comments, so it should be alot better by Thursday (so soon!). I have a plan now, and I've identified alot of extra information to cut out. But tonight I'm just going to feel sorry for myself because I did such a shitty job today.

Kelly and I didn't dress up for Halloween this year, but we did dress up the dog! He hates it so much! We were going for Abe Lincoln, but it turned out more Amish.

My format review came back yesterday. That was pretty fast! Luckily, there aren't to many format changes. Mainly some of my header styles need to be changed. I'm working on that right now. I also found something they missed. Page numbers are supposed to be at the top right corner of the page, with a double space between the number and the main text. But beginning with chapter 3, it was only single spaced. So I'm changing that as well. I want to get all these format issues out of the way before I have to make content changes after the defense.

I turned in my dissertation for formatting on Thursday last week. I was pretty frantic until then, working until 7PM every night to get everything done. Friday I was busy as well, making copies for all my committee members. But this weekend was very calm and stress-free. Kelly and I relaxed and played around for most of it. We made dinner for Kelly's family on Saturday and it turned out great. Kelly made an awesome soup, and I made some big pumpkin muffins. As a side dish, I went out and picked up this super spicy kung pao cabbage from our local chinese restaurant (which we love because the food is great and it's usually empty).

Now for the next two weeks my priority is to create my defense talk and practice!

I just finished chapter 7! But there's no time to celebrate. The format review deadline is next Thursday, so I still have to format chapters 3-7 and create all the pre-text material (like tables of content and stuff).

I'm almost finished with my final chapter, but with all the exposition, I thought it needed a few descriptive figures. Here's one I decided to draw quickly today. I'm not really all that happy with it because my drawing skills in Illustrator suck, but I think the figure is adequate for my dissertation. Any comments?

I don't really like My Morning Jacket all that much ("Wordless Chorus" makes me want to put a power drill to my head!), but I'm really starting to dig their new live album, Okonokos. The sound quality of the recording is amazing, and much better than their studio recordings IMHO. I've also been listening to a similar new band called Catfish Haven, not to be confused with Catfish Hunter. Sometimes I can't tell the two bands apart.

This guy must have known I was taking a picture because he opened his mouth as he swam past. 

These are some deadly frogs, but they look plastic to me! 

The Aquarium of the Pacific is in downtown Long Beach, right next to the ocean. It is one of the nicest I've ever been to. Here's a funny looking sea turtle.

Kelly and I spent the weekend in Long Beach, CA. She was running the half marathon there, and she was really impressive. Long Beach is a pretty nice town. There was barely anyone on the beach. 

Well, they found my reciept and I was able to apply for graduation today. That's a big load off my back. In other news, I've been writing well on this final chapter. I probably only have 3-4 pages single-spaced pages left. I'm right on schedule to finish all the writing by Oct. 20, leaving me plenty of time for revisions and formatting before the official university Format Review deadline.

Applying for graduation at ASU is a major pain in my ass. I tried to apply in mid-September. I paid my graduation fee and went to the registrar, but they had no record of my comp exam. It turns out the geology department doesn't finish the paperwork, and never tells the student this. So then I waste a bunch of time getting signatures, and turning the form into the grad college. It takes a week or two to process, so I'm trying to apply for graduation again. But in the meantime I've misplaced my paperwork. I can always fill out the forms again, but I'm missing the reciept for my graduation fee. So I go back to cashiering services today, hoping they can print out another reciept for me, but of course that's not how they do it. I have to fill out another form, and they have to look for their physical copy. I don't remember the exact day I paid either, so apparently they have to look through the reciepts for the entire month of September! Why can't they just look up my account in the computer? I don't know, but that will take another couple of days for them to find it. Meanwhile, the deadling for applying for graduation is next Monday, and this whole process is really starting to piss me off. I have more important things to worry about.

I've set a date for my defense. November 9th.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I got up and finished reading the last 50 or so pages of The Winter of Our Discontent. It's a wierd book and very different from the other Steinbeck I've read. It's set in 1960 instead of the '30s or '40s, so it has a more modern point of view. Most of the book is dialogue, using lots of slang and probably jingles and slogans too. And it doesn't help that the main character, Ethan Hawley, is something of a joker. What's tricky about the book is that what's going on in the dialoge is not what's really going on, so there were several parts where I was confused about the plot.

Let me explain. The main theme of the book is how business is at odds with human nature. To be successful in business, one needs to be calculating, efficient, and only think about the bottom line, but to be a successful human being, one needs to be caring, empathetic, and understanding. Hawley begins the book as a grocery clerk, and basically makes the choice to be a businessman rather than a human, and to do this he ends up fucking over some people that he really cares about. But he has to do whatever he can to win back the family fortune, right? So in much of the dialogue he is lying, playing dumb, or has an ulterior motive. He struggles with the guilt of his decisions, but also realizes that humans are both cruel and kind, depending on the situation.

The other main theme is that capitalism is going to destroy American "values", represented by Ethan's two kids. True business acumen breeds two types of people: cheats and snitches. This is more of an interpretation on my part, but it seems more and more obvious near the end of the book, and it's hard not to be disgusted with the kids once everything plays out. But morally, Hawley can't punish them because he's done both!

Unfortunately, I can't really recommend this book to anyone. I think it's an interesting picture of post-WWII America, but it's not really applicable today. The implicit racism and sexism in the novel don't exist in the same way nowadays. Also, the importance of family lineage and heritage that drives most of what Hawley is trying to accomplish doesn't apply today. And the "insights" into capitalism, like how a criminal with wealth is just called a capitalist, are common knowledge today. We know that God does not balance everything out in the end like Adam Smith said. A lot of people don't even believe in God now. There are just so many important political and social events that happened after the book was written.

I will say there was one part in the middle were Hawley was going to do something really bad, and had planned it for several chapters, and right when he was about to go through with it circumstances made him abort the plan. That part was pretty exciting.

I'm pretty much done with chapter 6 of my dissertation. I haven't had a lot of time to think about my SIMS data (collected last month) like the rest of my data, so I'm not that satisfied with my discussion section, but I'll get a chance to present some of this new data in a few weeks at our next research group meeting and get some feedback. As for the chapter, I'll sleep on it tonight and then tomorrow fix up anything I want to change, and then send it off to Tom to review. I should also send a copy to Rick, who runs the SIMS instrument. He seemed pretty interested in my experiment.

Next up will be to revise chapter 1, the background chapter, which Tom got back to me a few weeks ago. Then I need to start scheduling the actual defense. Looking at the deadlines and wait times (the dissertation has to be turned into format review 10 working days before the defense), I will most likely defend the first week of November. Two weeks for writing the final chapter (mostly arm waving), and two weeks for format review. I better get cracking!