This fellowship application business is really stressing me out. I just discovered that I sent one copy of my transcipts from undergrad to the wrong location. I have no idea how bad that is or what's going to happen with it though. I can only find out tomorrow. Shit.
I just wanted to apologize for the appallingly atrocious absence of any thought.
The FOX halftime show is one of my least favorite things on TV. That's saying a lot.
I went to a conference in Charlottesville, VA, but now I'm back.
Here's the power point file of my poster for the Z-machines conference. It's 42"x35", so you might have to zoom out to look at the whole thing. I like how it turned out. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I'm really looking forward to this conference. More than any other conference I've ever gone to, in fact. The science is fascinating to me, there aren't too many people attending (70-ish), and I am proud of the concept behind the poster I'm presenting. It is the absolute opposite of the Protostars and Planets V conference I attended last semester. I would be happy with myself if I ended up, for my career, building instruments that were aimed at doing this sort of science.
In many respects though, it's a long shot. The instrument I'm talking about in the poster isn't funded at all at this point. I don't have any kind of funding myself either, which means that I must work on something Walker needs me to work on (i.e. Supercam) so I can get the money to pay the bills. I am, however, applying for a NASA fellowship that would fund me for three years. Right now, I'm considering that as the most important thing for making this project happen. We'll need other funding to start building the instrument, but just to enter the design stage I'll need to be free to spend time working on this project, not on Supercam.
I'm tired.
I've posted pictures from New Year's Day (photos from the funeral service for Jaws), and from my trip to Colorado for snowboarding with Tiffany. Pictures are up for before, during, and after snowboarding.
I busted out of tonight's poker tournament in a record 1.75 hours, getting me something like 14th or 15th place out of 18 people. It was, to put it mildly, cold janky. I didn't play well, but I certainly didn't get lucky either, losing at the end by going all-in pre-flop on a coin flip, 55 vs. A7. Then the flop came 77K. Ouch! An ace on the turn merely served to shove it in my face that much more. Straight wack.
So, I'm back in Tucson for a few days before I head off to Charlottesville for the best conference ever. I had been in Colorado for the past few days, snowboarding at Vail, but I'm back now. After two days of riding, the only muscle that is significantly sore in my body is my stomach. Wow, ain't that exciting. I'll post pictures and movies soon.
Let's see... It's been awhile I suppose. I'm in Tucson right now, but tomorrow I'll be in Vail, Colorado. Then I'll be snowboarding with Tiffany for a couple of days before she catches a flight back to the bay area from Denver, while I go to Tucson. It'll be a crazy week, actually. On Friday, I flew from San Jose to Tucson. Tiffany had been planning on flying from Colorado (where she spent Christmas) to the bay area for a day, then flying on the same flight with me to Tucson. Unfortunately, she got sick with a bad case of the flu, so she ended up going straight from Denver to Tucson Friday night.
It had been our plan to go snowboarding in New Mexico or Telluride, CO, but there just isn't any snow in the southern part of the US yet. Add to that the fact that Jayme and her boyfriend were going to be learning to snowboard at Vail this week, and we decided to change plans and head there to snowboard instead. This involved some craziness with respect to buying airplane tickets, but it worked out in the end. So, that's how we arrived at the current plan that I outlined above
Unfortunately, Tiffany is still somewhat sick (worse today than yesterday), and it's unclear how she will feel in a couple of days when we're supposed to be snowboarding. But she's insistent on going. For my part, I'm looking forward to spending some time in the snow, but I hope that she doesn't end up getting herself sick again right before school starts.
Over the weekend, Tiff and I bought five new plants to put in the house (one cactus, two succulents, and two tropical houseplants). Unfortunately, two of my desert plants are dead. Fuzzball died awhile ago and Jaws died while I was gone (although he was clearly on his way out at that point). Both of them died due to lack of sunlight and over-watering. However, I believe my new desert plants (named Stones, Snowballs, and Royal Flush) will do better, since I know to water them only once a week, and since they're on a window sill that gets a ton of light. The other two plants are named Bushels and Petals. I'll try to get pictures of them up soon.
I'm about 3/4 of the way through The Subtle Knife, which is the second book in a series called His Dark Materials. I'm liking it so far. I also finished the Sandman series. It was awesome, as expected.