So here's the long version of my NYC trip:

Brookhaven Labs is near the Shirley-Mastic station of the Long Island Rail Road, but there aren't any trains between 8AM and 1PM, so I had to drive 10 miles down the highway to Patchogue (pronounced "patch-ig"). From there I rode an express bus to Babylon station because they were doing maintenance on the track. If I had known, I would have just driven down to Babylon, which is only about 30 more miles down the road. At Babylon, I finally got on a train to Penn Station in downtown Manhattan.

My first stop was to take the subway down to Ground Zero. It was pretty intense staring at the huge concrete hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once stood. And it's hard not to tear up in St. Paul's chapel across the street. The have preserved inside some of the memorabilia people left at the site those first few weeks, like pictures of missing loved ones and firefighter patches.

Since I was downtown, I decided to walk down Wall Street. It was narrow and pretty boring; just a bunch of stuffy banks.

By now it was 1PM, so I decided I had time to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's by Central Park, so it was a long subway ride. The museum is a few blocks away from the subway station, so I got to walk past Park Avenue highrises and ladies walking their stupid fluffy dogs. The Met was pretty cool, and frickin' huge. There are so many cool things there, but I limited myself to European Painting, American Painting, and some Modern Art. I walked past a lot of old furniture, which is something you don't see much in art museums. They have a bunch of Picassos (who I still don't get), and I was really impressed with the Rembrandts and Vermeers. I wish there were more people today who could paint like that. There was a Matisse exhibition, but I didn't go 'cause I don't care about him. One the roof they had a special installation by Sol LeWitt that is supposed to be a modern take on the New York skyline. I heard one stupid high school girl say "You know what would be cool? Take a picture of that with this in front." That being the skyline, and this being the artist's skyline. And I'm thinking "duh!"

By the time I was finished with the tiny part of the Met I allowed myself to peruse, it was time to head over to the East Village and the Giant Robot store. Then I ate at a local dumplings place. They had the best, freshest, veggie dumplings I've ever had. I recommend that anyone over in that part of the city definitely try this place.

After dinner, it was time to start heading back to Penn Station. It's relatively close to Times Square, so I decided to swing by there instead and walk to Penn Station. Let me tell you, Times Square is fucking intense, with all those neon lights and video screens staring you down. It's worse than Las Vegas because it's basically one big enclosed area rather than a long strip. There I saw MTV studios, and people from Comedy Central were out trying to get an audience for a new show they're taping. Alas, I didn't have the time!

Back in Penn Station, it was a little confusing to figure out which train to take out of there, unlike coming into the city where there's only one train on one track. But I got it and headed out to Babylon. When we arrived, the conductor called it the end of the line, I went down to find the bus to take me back to Patchogue, but there weren't any busses. Then I realized that I must transfer to the other train at the station, but when I got back up to the platform it was just pulling away. So I had to wait an hour for the next transfer to come by. That pretty much sucked. I got back to the lab at about 11PM. It was a pretty full day.

For anyone interested in costs:
One way from Patchogue to Penn Station (off peak) = $9.50
One way from Penn Station to Patchogue (peak) = $13.00
One day "fun pass" for the subway = $7.00
Student admission to the Met = $7.00

I'm in Brookhaven Labs once again. I scheduled myself an extra day, however, so today I'm going into New York City. Too bad I forgot my camera again. I definitely want to check out the World Trade Center site and the Giant Robot store, but I haven't figured what else I want to do. We'll see when I get there. Getting there will be an adventure, since I have to take the train into the city, then transfer to the subway. But of course there is train maintenance, so I think I might be rerouted by express bus (I'm not sure yet). Also, I have to drive a few towns over to Patchogue to catch a late morning train during the week.

Sorry for not blogging in a while. Once the new semester started, things have kicked into high gear. I've been doing a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of synchrotron data processing. I'm going back for the last time in two weeks, so I'm going through all my data to make sure I have everything covered. I'm also doing followup TEM work on the samples I analyzed two weeks ago, and starting to do sample prep for the next trip. All that and I've decided to take Don Burt's Ore Deposits class, mostly for employment reasons. It hasn't been so bad so far, but I think it would suck for undergraduates. I can see why all the undergrads hate Burt's petrology class.

Kelly goes back to Safford and Morenci this afternoon. Keep her in your thoughts!

So I'm trying to analyze my data from the synchrotron and nothing's working. Then I realize that they just put new parts in the x-ray microscope and rewrote some of the software to run it. They probably also changed the file format somewhat, which explains why I can't read the new files with the old software I have. Unfortunately, the new software requires the new version of IDL, which I don't have and can't afford right now. I'm trying to download the free "virtual machine" which only allows you to run software, but the website is running extremely slow right now, so I haven't been successful at it yet.

back in town. busy as all get out. gotta go!

I think I'm starting to go crazy from lack of food and sleep, too much repetition, and constantly staring at a computer screen. I'm talking to myself now, like the retard that I feel like. "Dint duh dile" = Print the file.

I drove out to Montauk Point yesterday after I started my morning "stack". I guess there's a famous lighthouse out there or something. I was more interested in all the glacial till. There are huge pieces of super-porphyritic granite (with feldspars the size of your thumb), awesome gniesses, and all sorts of igneous boulders. The sand there is, of course, made up of tiny minerals from these rocks, and I probably looked like a total idiot just standing there staring at a palm-ful of sand. There were these patches of purple sand too, which was composed of mostly mafics (I wish I had a magnet with me!) and a curious pink translucent mineral. It could just be rose quartz, but it was more the color of pink tourmaline. I tried to find the source rock for this pink sand, but I couldn't find it. I did find one egg-sized piece of a white (quartz? felspar?) rock with tiny pink minerals in it. It broke pretty easily, but the pink minerals were scarce, so you'd have to weather a whole lot of it to get a big patch of purple sand. And where would the mafic minerals come from? Oh well, next time I'm out there I'll try to remember to bring a vial with me. I did manage to collect a few cool pebbles, though.

It took two hours to drive out there and two hours back because of all the traffic in the Hamptons. I can't believe this major highway all of a sudden goes through the middle of these boutique-filled "villiages". Southhampton, Easthampton, Bridgehampton, and I'm sure there's a few more of them, too. At least Amangasset has a unique name. Then, when I got back, everything had gone to shit. I had to restart the stack halfway through...twice! Ultimately, I was up till after 1AM setting up the overnight stack.

Travelling to New York always sucks because of the time change. My goal is to get to Brookhaven by 5PM. Subtract 2 hr drive halfway across long island, 5 hrs of airline flights, 1 hr layover, 1 hr travel overhead, 3 hr time change, and I have to leave AZ at 5AM. This time I connected in Houston. The flight from Phoenix to Houston wasn't too bad. I slept most of the way. But I had to sit next to a fat girl on the way from Houston to New York. She was probably only a freshman in college, but she was oozing into my side over and under the armrest. Then she pulls out a Precious Moments coloring book! Ugh. There was also an actual monk on the plane. He was this big guy with a long gray beard, wearing a gray robe with prayer beads and a rope sash. I overheard someone ask what he was, and the monk said he was a Franciscan friar. What a crazy flight!

I'm blogging from the synchrotron at Brookhaven today. I've been really busy with sample prep and house stuff last week, so I haven't had time to blog until now. The x-ray microscope is taking a "spectral stack" now, which should take about seven hours. Nows my chance to eat and relax a bit.

Last week Kelly was out of town at Morenci, so I worked late at ASU to finish all the sample prep I needed to get done. But things kept happening. I had to plan for delivery of our new dishwasher, changing oil in my car and Kelly's car, hang out with friends that are in town for a couple weeks, and even my grandma died. Let me just say it was stressful to balance all these things, especially with all the emotional highs and lows. But I got everything done and my samples turned out well.

On a whim, I decided to check my biorhythm today. Turns out, in the next four days my intellectual, emotional, and physical cycles are all simultaneously at an all time low. Crap! Thank goodness I don't believe in that shit.

I'm done with the updates to my blog template.

Today is pissing me off. The dishwasher in our house is an old piece of shit, but it's under warranty so a guy has to come out and look at it. Of course, I can't schedule when the guy comes. Instead, I get a phone call yesterday that somebody will be out there between 11 and 3 'click'. It's already after 1PM now. At least I got some yard work done. There's some more weeds to take care of in the backyard, but I'm afraid I won't hear the doorbell out there.

Also, the lawn mower the landlord left us is also a piece of shit. Kelly, Jace, and I all tried to start it and failed. I have to call about that too after the dishwasher guy gets here.

Excuse the mess. I'm working on fixing the old, crappy HTML in the Blogger template.

I picked this template when I first started blogging, but it isn't available anymore. I like to think it's "rare" and unique. That's why I stick with it. But, like I said, the HTML is really crappy, so I'm in the process of cleaning it up.

Man, I keep forgetting to blog. I finally got our cable/internet/TiVo setup working peachy on Wednesday afternoon. Initial TiVo setup requires a phone line, so I had to bring it over to Kelly's parents house for a couple of hours to do that. After that, I hooked it up to the network and it works great. Today I signed up to expedite download of the new software version that will allow us to transfer files from the TiVo to our personal computers. This is almost like having TiVo in every room in the house!

I decided to hook my computer up to the TV because we download HBO shows off the internet (rather than paying an extra $10 a month just for Six Feet Under). Unfortunately, my computer is now only good for that because any sort of text looks pretty crappy on the TV, even though video looks fine. All the stuff we used to do on my computer we can now use Kelly's computer for.

Kelly and I are moved into our new place, but it's still a mess and the cable doesn't even work yet (Cox guy comes by tomorrow morning). I'll contact people soon with our new address.

In other news, I've recently discovered something both cool and useful. Konfabulator is software that run "widgets" on your computer desktop. I used to think that widgets only existed in theoretical economics problems (Tom can make XX widgets in YY hours with $ZZ in parts. How much should he charge per widget?) but I guess they refer to any little piece of software that displays information. The widget I like in particular (and I think would be really useful to everybody) is "What To Do", which simply presents a nice-looking to-do list on the desktop. I've been using the analog version of this widget (= pen and paper) for a while, so you can imagine how much better this is. This little gem is included with Konfabulator, but there are tons of other useful/entertaining widgets to download as well.

CNET has revealed their top 10 list of internet fads. I'd come across most of them before except for #7, Ellen Feiss. She did one of the commercials for Apple's "switch-to-mac" ad campaign, and can be seen here. I remember some other commercials for that campaign, but not hers. Then I found some parody ads...

• Monkey switch


• Tweek switch


• Canada switch


• Star Wars switch

In case you didn't know (because I didn't), HTML is going to way of the dodo, to be replaced in the future with XHTML. XHTML is pretty similar to its predecessor, but it is much more strict. More importantly, XHTML is supposed to separate style from content (in other words, no more formatting with tables!), and because of this, XHTML is much more flexible in how webpages can be designed. In the spirit of things, I took a little time to redesign my homepage with XHTML 1.0 (transitional), using CSS2 for all styling (and I didn't have to use a single < TABLE > tag). I didn't know a lick of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) before starting this, and I'm really impressed at how simple the HTML becomes.

Moving, moving, moving...

There's been quite a few things going on this week. On Tuesday, I did TEM all morning, attended Paul Niles' Ph.D defense, and finished a coherent GSA abstract. Joe has a practice defense this afternoon to prepare for his real one next week. I also got a new TiVo in the mail, and we get the keys to the house tomorrow.

Doh! I had forgotten that GSA abstracts are due tomorrow. Better start working on them!

I also have TEM tomorrow.

One more week

Kelly and I are supposed to get the keys for our new rental home this week. I'm very excited to finally start moving in, although we probably won't be living there for good until the end of the month, when our current lease expires. I'd rather be moving non-essential furniture than sitting around trying to not spend money.