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- I'm feeling :amused
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| ...I married my best friend. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) datagoddess, I love you so much and am so glad you have been and are with me. *smooch* - Tags:toni
- I'm feeling :loved
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| Well, ICCP 2008 is now over. Tomorrow I have to be in the lobby by 7:15am for a long bus ride to Chichen Itza. I have no idea how long the tour is supposed to be or what time it's expected to get back to my hotel.
I noticed something this week that my advisor had talked about before, that I'm sure is present in any field. There's an Old Guard that runs the ICCP (International Commission on Clouds and Precipitation, a division of some other body which is itself a division of the World Meteorological Organization, which in itself is a United Nations body) - a handful of elderly cloud physicists who, with the exception of the committee president, have been pretty grumpy during presentation question and answer periods all week. Despite their pressing of the younger crowds to keep open minds, they have built up a lot of cynicism with age. There is a lot of age striation in the field as well - apart from the Old Guard, there are people around my and my advisor's age, and then post-docs and grad students in their 20s like my lab mate.
On the actual ICCP sits the Old Guard and a just couple of people in my age group who were voted on at the last meeting four years ago in Bologna. Apparently there was another opening that they voted on in private last night, and my advisor is now on the ICCP. Considering how she got grilled after her talk Tuesday morning, by some of the Old Guard, one of whom flat out told her he didn't like her modeling framework at all and she should do something else, I think that's pretty cool. | |
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| Nothing like making a quick trip down to the hotel market to get a bottle of water and hearing, from the karaoke bar (sounds from which carry very well throughout the main pyramid atrium), a girl singing "My Girl" in Spanish, waaaaay off key. :-) - Tags:travel
- I'm feeling :amused
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| Loud Cellphone UsersION, I was highly amused while checking in for tomorrow morning's flights at Delta's web site, when I clicked on a link to go to a TSA page to verify the liquids in carry-ons regulations, and IE returned this: This website does not have a valid security certificate. | |
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| I don't know why but I was rather tickled walking through the department corridors earlier to see at least four computer monitors in the various display cases with an error on the screen. | |
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| Anyone been to Cancun, Mexico that can offer any helpful hints/advice?
I leave Sunday morning for the International Conference on Clouds and Precipitation, wherein I have a poster presentation on Tuesday, July 8. The conference in Monday through Friday, and the following Saturday I was thinking (weather, health, and mood depending) of taking one of the resort's organized tours of Chichen Itza.
I know practically zero Spanish. I'm flying down on Sunday with a lab-mate, and we're planning on sharing/splitting the (cost of the) ride from the airport to the resort hotel. - Tags:travel
- I'm feeling :curious
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| When you see this, post a quote from Doctor Who in your LJ.
Sarah Jane: "What if there's something horrible waiting for us?"
The (4th) Doctor: "Well don't tell Harry that, he's gone first."
-- Genesis of the Daleks | |
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| Just caught up on S4 of Doctor Who, through Steven Moffat's 2-parter, "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead".
Whoa. Awesome.
All I have to say is, when Moffat takes over as show-runner, we're going to be in for some really creepy Doctor Who. - Tags:tv
- I'm feeling :impressed
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| If your appointment for the showing of our house is at 6:30pm, looking in our side and back windows at us at 6:10pm is rude.
Kthxbye.
Sheesh. | |
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| On the way up to campus this morning, I caught the end of a report about a new electric car from (I think) Honda, that runs on hydrogen. It was a syndicated report and I didn't catch who made it or I'd e-mail them.
Putting aside the fact that hydrogen is an expensive gas to obtain because most of it is high up in our atmosphere or extracted via electrolysis of water (which takes electricity from somewhere)... The reporter closed the story by stating:
...and instead of emitting greenhouse gases, this engine's exhaust is water vapor. (Emphasis mine.)
Uh... hello? Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, responsible for anywhere from 30 to 70% of earth's greenhouse effect. It's also the one greenhouse gas whose atmospheric amount we have the most difficulty measuring, thanks to high variability due to the dynamic water cycle. | |
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| - I'm feeling :amused
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| - Tags:tv
- I'm feeling :amused
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| Doctor Who guru Davies steps downI'm not squeeing so much for RTD's departure, as I've liked him pretty well as show runner, although maybe he has passed his prime as far as Doctor Who is concerned. I'm just such a Steven Moffat fan, though. His Doctor Who episodes are my all-time favorites, and I still can laugh at Coupling reruns I've seen dozens of times. (Considering overall fan reaction and the awards his episodes have won, could the Beeb have even seriously considered anyone else?) - Tags:tv
- I'm feeling :ecstatic
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| Trees block solar panels, and a feud ends in U.S. courtI've been to Sunnyvale and neighboring cities more times than I can count, and have seen plenty of both in the area. Personally, I think the tree-owners should have been able to leave their redwoods alone, since they were there well before the neighbor installed the solar panels. This is another example of excessive litigiousness (and self-righteousness) that royally pisses me off. It's also not surprising to start to see conflicting environmental interests that are both on the side of conservation. What do you think? Poll #1190866 Solar Panels vs. Trees
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllShould solar panel owners be allowed to control neighbors' tree heights/shading? Other comment? | |
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| ZOMG. "Guess What's Coming to Dinner" was awesome. And for a show that's been marketed all season with the tag line of All will be revealed, why do I hear a quote from Hermes in the Futurama episode "The Deep South" after every BSG episode this season? That just raises further questions! :-) - Tags:tv
- I'm feeling :amused
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| In between a bazillion things to do to get the house ready, and trying to come up with what to add to my poster in my research since submitting the paper, I present some random thoughts on Battlestar Galactica thus far. IMHO, of course. :-) ( Apropos of Nothing, Possible Spoilers through 'Faith' )- Tags:tv
- I'm feeling :tired
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| Chicago and Stomp are both coming to Elliott Hall of Music for Purdue's 2008-2009 Convocation Season! I've seen them both before, but so what? :-) I'm also a bit curious about the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble show. - Tags:shows
- I'm feeling :bouncy
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- I'm feeling :amused
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| It's gone! It's done!
(And I still have all 10 fingers! ;-) )
The conference paper has been e-mailed to the ICCP. It is outta here! | |
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| A boost right about when I needed it, from my advisor this morning.
Yesterday afternoon she asked to see my draft of my conference paper so far. All I had done was about four pages, with placeholders for eleven figures, describing the new tool/program I'm using. I'd gotten nothing in the results section, and even what I had done in the whole paper was just a first-pass brain dump.
This morning we talked for a few minutes about what I should focus on for "results", given that my paper is more about the tool than any specific theory.
But before that she said the following:
"You're writing is just... I have to thank you. After all the editing I've been doing from student papers lately, just... thank you. I'm still bleeding on it with edits, but more for scientific specifics than writing corrections. I'm just so relieved."
W00t! I'd say I'll be insufferably pleased with myself for a while, but I don't have the time. Today and Sunday I need to get something to talk about as results. And I know I have to evolve/shift my writing style to more hard science presentation than I've been used to doing, and that's coming with practice, but it's just nice to hear what she said, especially when I've been so frustrated over this frackking program lately. | |
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| The downtown Indianapolis Peregrine Falcons have four eggs, and apparently two have just hatched: The Indianapolis Star Falcon Cams (links to blog - cam links are near upper right of page). The two Boulder, CO, NCAR Great Horned Owl chicks are getting quite large and losing their down: NCAR Owlcam. | |
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| The seismologist on faculty has already retrieved the digital data from the campus seismic station (West Lafayette, IN is about 250 miles from the epicenter) for this morning's quake and made it available to students. See a plot below the cut: ( Purdue Cherry Lane Digital Seismic Station )Don't ask me what any of it means other than the time of the quake should be pretty obvious. :-) [ETA: Apparently there was a sizeable aftershock (4.5 magnitude) about 20 minutes ago. We didn't feel that one - here we must have been on a node of the waves.] | |
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| OK, this is the best tidbit related to this morning's New Madrid-related earthquake yet: Given that the other half of my department at Purdue is geology, and we have student-run seminars every Friday afternoon anyway, today's announcement cracked me up:
Today at 12:30 Name Deleted will present a talk, titled: "Liquefaction susceptibility for the region of Evansville, IN" in room 2201. There will be cookies...
"There will be cookies..." It's a normal part of the seminars and announcements, but it just cracked me up today. | |
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| Apparently southern Illinois had an earthquake this morning. 66 miles west of Evansville, IN, 4:36:59 CDT5.4 MagnitudeWe felt it here, just about 200 miles away. Toni and I each thought the other was violently shuddering/shaking the bed for about 5 seconds. Toni says she then suspected an earthquake. I didn't. We both went back to sleep, and I didn't suspect it until I saw the above report (2nd link) on Yahoo! news. Not a good sign for the New Madrid fault waking up. Tell the USGS if you felt it!- I'm feeling :groggy
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| There's a new cloud physics Ph.D. in the world. My office mate passed her oral defense. :-) | |
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- I'm feeling :busy
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| Squeed all the way through watching the season 4 premiere of BSG, but Toni and I had gotten so used to a recent marathon re-watching of the show up to this point, that I hate waiting a whole week between episodes again! - Tags:tv
- I'm feeling :enthralled
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| In the instructions for cloud physics homework involving running a cloud model on our Linux network, from my advisor/CP prof:
"...set the ... time back to 600 seconds, or the model goes boom." (Emphasis mine.)
And it's in there more than once. :-) | |
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| Finally!
I actually managed to look at my radar data and aircraft data simultaneously in 3-D in the viz application today. And extract time series of aircraft probe data with radar data along the same segment.
Big deal? Actually, yes, considering that the radar data came from a stationary radar site on Barbuda while the aircraft data came from the NCAR research C-130 aircraft flying in circles and back and forth sampling random clouds throughout the radar scanning volume. And considering what's gone into development of the program to date. I've had years of exposure to commercial software development, up close and personal from the inside. Academic research software development (by other grad students) is a completely different set of challenges.
Yes, I am a geek. And I may actually be able to get some results for my paper for the conference that's now due in exactly a month. | |
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| 1. Adobe makes a web site with a glaring negative in its terms of use. Later they admit it was a mistake and promise to fix it. From everything I see on my flist, all at Adobe are forgiven.
2. LJ makes a change in service that is also negative, and also later admits it was a mistake and does fix it. From my friendsfriends page, all at LJ still need to be strung up or backed against the wall.
WTF? Is this just a difference with the specific people I have on my flist? That they have brains? ;-) | |
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