Wow my Wednesday afternoon departure is coming up fast!  I wrapped up the last of my experiments in the lab today. Unfortunately it didn’t work but if it would have, I would have been light years ahead of where I was earlier in the week.  Oh well, I’ve found short cuts usually don’t work in this field anyway.

It is sort of strange organizing my cabinet in the lab, though it certainly needed it.  Almost feels like I’m leaving forever.  Hahah, not quite that lucky yet. I also spent sometime moving out of the other labs I’ve been working in - when you have your hands in as many pots as I currently do, this takes some time.

I think the house is pretty well ready to go.  Not much is going to be going on there this summer so there really wasn’t much prep work to do their.  My room on the other hand is the epitome of a disaster.  I’m starting to bulldoze things into different piles but I worked so much this week I really haven’t made much headway.

On the bike front I’m going to just buy a nice road bike when I get to the Caltech campus.  There is a pretty sweet bike shop not two blocks off campus.  It is they who will get my money.  I made this decision after realizing my current ride is in need a of a lot of work and parts and it really wouldn’t be worth it to ship it out to California.  I’m looking at getting a single speed with reversible rear hub so I can put it into suicidal yet thrilling fixed gear mode.

(whole image gallery is here)

I really do live in on an island of trees in downtown Hancock.

Quite possibly the coolest picture ever taken.

I would like to think that most of the people I know spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to do the most for human kind while still being able to survive. For as long as I can remember, I’ve just been sort of heading in the most difficult and un-glamorous direction since it seems to produce the only actual tangible results. However, on Wednesday evening I lost the faith if only for an instant. I was reading a book on theoretical metallurgy from the 1920’s and the whole story finally hit me: how much I’ve given up, how much I will never know and more importantly, how many times this process has happened. Not in typical chronic sense but literally in the how many iterations of the expansion / contraction of the Universe have I sat there on a concrete floor and read that same book. 100 times? 1,000,000 times? 1 time? I swear I’m on zero drugs here but this subject has always bothered me. Everyone just assumes this is the first time we’ve done this but is that necessarily true? Any serious student of advanced physics knows in the back of their mind that is a chance we’ve debated this issue billions of times. What strikes me as interesting though is that were it true, there is a story of untold struggle that preceded the latest great crunch and the same energy resonances that make up the matter in the world we currently get all bent out of shape about, has already been there, done that. Perhaps again and again.

Basically this whole mess has arisen out of my love of music. Walk with me for a moment on this path, I swear it will make sense. Music has always been an integral part of my life. For a while in high school I tried to hack it as a musician which I totally sucked at. Since I couldn’t really read music (long story) I just assumed that I had no talent in the field so I eventually hung up my instruments: piano and trumpet.

Fast forward many years later and I find myself sitting in my room with a couple of people who know vastly more about the subject of music than I do. Yet for some reason what I’m telling them is making sense: apparently I have an ear for music. Several WMTU DJ’s have “never heard music described like that”. Makes sense as I really don’t know the terminology of things but there is a definite genre that I can usually peg the hits on.

[See Cold War Kids: Hang Me Up to Dry]
The smooth White Stripes feel is evident from the get go but they bring some energy to it. The almost percussion guitar keeps you honest through out the tune - plus the riff is uber catchy and the overdrive is perfect. The slightly stressed vocals give the song the edge a studio produced song needs to maintain authenticity. The later transition between chorus and verse where the chaotic piano is introduced is great as the difference in rhythm is reconciled as the stress of an off beat is building yet before it becomes annoying and allows a sense of relief when it finally connects.

Anyway, back to how this relates to the universe: if I can’t directly impact people, which according to certain blogs I really sucked at, I would like to indirectly do it in the hope that maybe this time we’ll be clever enough to save ourselves.

Disjointed this post is I know, but I spent too many hours this week in a plane and car watching the completely apathetic vegetation go by. Speaking of which, I should have some amazing aerial photos to share tomorrow which carries with it an entirely different side story and I have to work tomorrow.

Overall the JANNAF conference and the supporting week around it was pretty awesome.  It was nice to actually see serious technical data present rather than the usual cartoons and ambiguous plots.

We stayed the first night (Sunday) in the Denver Marriot where the conference was held – it basically looked like a Mega-MEEM except made of all glass rather than brick.  I went ahead and compiled a side-by-side comparison.

On Monday, there wasn’t really much happening at the conference so Brad took me up to Boulder to visit the labs at NIST where he did his post-doc.  I must say that was impressive.  As I’m beginning to understand, big science happens in small rooms.  There was some very crazy stuff going on there that I only have a glancing understanding of.

After hitting up NIST we ascended high into the Rockies. The following two nights we stayed with Brad’s old neighbor Rory who has a very impressive palace up around 10,000 feet.  The hospitality provided by him and his wife was very very nice and much appreciated.  On the first morning, I went for a run up there.  I started out by going up a substantial hill – needless to say 8 minutes later I was nearly dead.

Tuesday was the day of my talk.  Earlier in the day I had lunch with some movers and shakers in the field which I really enjoyed.  At my talk, I had good attendance and I believe I hit all the talking points I wanted to without sticking my foot in my mouth.  The audience was very receptive of the topic and had some excellent questions after my 25 minutes of power point digital carnage was over.  Brad said I “hit it out of the park” which was the positive reinforcement I was looking for.

After the talk I was sitting in the lobby waiting for Brad to put out some email fires when I was approached by a corporate head-hunter and invited up to a 20th floor hospitality room.  Having nothing to do for the next 20 or so minutes I went up.  Long story short, I ended up with a beer and the following morning I found out I won the door prize: a Garmin c330 GPS navigation system.  First time I’ve ever won a door prize and I’ll say I did pretty well on it.  On the way back to the place we were staying in the mountains, Brad and I took the rental car for a little cruise on some back roads.  Exchange of the day had to be:
Brad: “Can you still see the elk?”
Me: “As soon as something finally breaks off this side mirror I should be able to.”

Wednesday’s sessions at the conference were informative as well.  There is some very fascinating technology out there that I had no idea was around.  Not because it is super secret or anything but rather because I basically live in a box.  A very dark box.

That evening we were staying at the hotel again so we were able to go out on the town with some of the other conference attendees.  I was talking with the guy who will be my boss this summer at JPL and who is also an avid deanmassey.net reader, Rich.  The good news: I’ll basically have my own lab out at JPL.  The bad news: It is basically mine because no-one else wants to use it as it has no air-conditioning. Looking at the average summer temperatures in Pasadena it is going to be a scorcher.  My grand-advisor said “you’re skinny now, but when you get done there, you’ll probably weigh about 45 lbs”.  The facility was also described as “a very nice chicken coup”.   I’m not worried though, as long as they don’t have any strict dress code I’ll just work the entire summer with my shirt off hahahaha.  16 days until I leave and I honestly can’t wait.

On my way home on Thursday, I had a 4 hour layover in Minneapolis so I took advantage of the time and hung out with my brother.   I’m actually very impressed with Minnesota’s effort to try and be progressive enough to introduce mass transit.  I know it was an uphill battle but I’m glad they did it.  Anyway, I took the train from the airport down to the warehouse district and met Gregg there.  My layover planted me square into rush hour so that really was the only way that it could have worked.  It was good to see the bro again and I’m glad things worked out.

My Isle Royale trip is sort of on hold right now.  I thought I was going to have enough stuff tossed up in the air that I could escape for a week.  Unfortunately, stuff started falling back to earth before it was supposed to.  I’m going to try and reduce the duration of the trip and just do a Friday – Monday trip.  That sort of sucks, but it is certainly better than nothing at all.

In a strange sense, plane rides, like camping trips offer a certain level of privacy. Sure the nice lady next to me who helped me set up my laptop on the hidden tray thing is reading this, but that’s probably about it. More importantly, I’m completely unavailable. I can work without distraction. Work which I have now just completed. Despite my last whiney sounding entry things are going very well for me now. Apparently I’ve learned how to technical write after years of struggling. Perhaps it is the new quote “write like a reporter not a grad student” that I have written on a piece of duct tape and stuctk to my laptop lid or perhaps it is *gasp* some level a maturity. My bet is on the duct tape. Anyway, as I glance out over the patch worked landscape 7 miles below me and sip on my Jack and Coke I can’t help but feel good. I’m heading out to Denver to give what is easily the most subjectively kick ass talks I’ve ever given – the presentation is also very coherent and aesthetically appealing. I can’t wait. Brad and I will be staying with one of his buddies well up into the Rockies for a couple of the nights while were here which should also prove to be awesome. Anyway, I see the mountains on the horizon and it feels like we’re slowing down (plus the lady is curious now too).

I need:

to pay the bills I’ve been neglecting

to clean this joint up

to get a new bike computer

to take off my shoes that have been on for 36 hours

to burn CD’s for those I said I would

to wrap up a technical paper for my Colorado trip

to figure out how the hell I’m getting from LAX to Caltech on June 6th

to shake down those who are not living up to their end of the bargain

to reduce hypnagogic myoclonic twitchs by sleeping more than 4 hours per night

to no be such a slave to my research

to enjoy the UP during my terminal stint here

to tell my boss I’m going to Isle Royal May 21-25 to hike 40+ miles and decompress

to appease my guilty conscience for taking 5 days off

to feel like I’m at the helm again.

What is particularly interesting is that the areas in cyan are continental shelf (water < 150 meters deep). 18,000 years ago during the last ice age, the water level was approximately 100-120 meters below where it currently is [source]. Imagine the stuff that has been lost. Perhaps more relevantly, if sea levels continue to rise imagine the stuff we’ll loose. Guess who is biking to work tomorrow?

Also, Brad forwarded me an email today with the following attachment. I’m sure it has been rocketing around the internet but I should do my part and join the herd and advocate for the construction of a wall around Hot Springs, Arkansas. I sure hope this was meant to be a joke but I could totally see some Fox News viewer coming up with this. One of the more subtle nuances of humor in the piece is how the title manages to spell ‘exacerbate’ but fails to connect on ‘warming’.

Update: Yeah it was sort of a hoax.  Thank god.

I sent a modified version of this to Brandon and Angela (both involved in the medical field):

So like once or twice a month someone comes pounding on my door all messed up from some accident. I’ve amassed a fairly impressive triage unit here at the house but I would like to have more technical knowledge rather than just guessing and making stuff up as I go. Zero body count so far but who knows who will roust me out of bed next and the injuries just seem to be getting worse. Is there a definitive text on psudo-amature care? Put it this way: in the two months I’ve had: significant arterial bleeding in the arm (dipshit punched through a non-tempered glass window - basically slit his wrist - I’ve never seen so much blood flow), all sorts of banged up (chronic alcoholic was hit by a car or something big and heavy) and bloody biker with a nasty case of the persistent shakes (endo’d in a construction zone) come through my door.

Basically what I’m looking for is some more concrete resources so I know for sure when it is well out of my hands and the ambulance drivers should be called out of the bar to go get the meat wagon to bring the lucky soul to the witch doctors on the hill.

Any help from the patrons of deanmassey.net would be greatly appreciated by me and the next person who shows up bloody on my doorstep. I’ve been seriously coughing up the ~$60 to get a blood pressure monitor since I’m not trained to tell exactly when people are in shock. Sometimes it is clear, other times not so much. I would like to remove the ambiguity and continue my zero body count streak. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem fixing people up, I just don’t want to be wrong and have someone die because I didn’t understand the warning signs.

PS. I fake graduated this past weekend. I’ll post the pictures when I get them (hint hint mom).

In honor of school being officially out of session in the next 24 hours I give to those fortunate enough to not be a grad student: NeoCon Bingo!  Sort of reminds me of the Fox News drinking game we used to play.  In that one, each person picks a word like “terrorist” or “Saddam” and every time someone on Fox News says your word everyone, else has to drink.  Needless to say, after about 15 minutes you’re well on your way to being loaded.

I skipped work today and spent the entire day cleaning an painting and hauling crap out of the house.  After working for about 14 hours, I am quite tired and my hands look like hell.  However some mad progress was made today and essentially all that is left is some additional cleaning.  Ok, lots of additional cleaning all of which needs to be done before 4pm tomorrow.  Unfortunately I have to work tomorrow most of the day so I won’t be able to do it.   Equally unfortunate is that a solid 1/2 of the house consists of people that are completely worthless when it comes to doing just about anything that doesn’t directly and immediately benefit them.  The other half is quite responsible.  Bed time.

So I found this picture today on a English Russia - a site I occasionally drop by (you should check it out as well)

The article reads: In early 1970s in Russia there were tests of trains that had jet plane engines.

Its maximum speed was around 249 km/h (around 180 mph). And it had engines from Yak-40 passenger jet plane.

I’ve always admired the flat out balls the Russians have when it comes to crazy yet practical engineering.  It is quiet and elegant solution: no overhead wires, no huge vats of diesel, no frictionally imposed limit on acceleration and more important deceleration.  History has judged this to be impractical but I’m glad to see someone at least built and tested it.