I got the referee report back on the paper I submitted to ApJ a few weeks ago. It was rather negative. In fact, to say that it was a negative report would be the understatement of the year. The word I would use to characterize much of the report is "scathing." I would say the primary problem identified by the referee was that we didn't do enough background searching, leading to some inappropriate conclusions. I haven't yet checked the references suggested by the referee, but I have little doubt that she/he is correct and we simply missed several important, related papers. I do wish the referee had used slightly kinder language. At times it seemed that our paper really upset him/her, which is unfortunate and certainly was not intended.
The real question now, however, is what do with the paper. I don't want to get into details, but it's not yet clear to me how to proceed. I'll talk with Walker on Monday and hopefully we'll figure something out.
It doesn't feel good to get negative feedback on your research, I must say.
Sest la vee-eh, as I would say.
I just got my email notification saying I passed the written prelim. I didn't think I would fail, but you never know. Last night I had a bad dream about failing, so it was nice to get the good news today.
Yesterday Tiff and I flew to the bay area. My parents' house looks great! In fact, I don't think it's ever looked better. I took a bunch of pictures of the whole thing, outside and inside.
We then went on a whirlwind tour of the bay, going with Jayme (Tiff's sister) and Nelson (Jayme's boyfriend) up to San Francisco to see Dane's (Tiff's brother) apartment and hang out with some of his friends at a BBQ in SF. Then we met up with Jessica, a friend of ours from the Stebbin's days, for dinner at a Japanese noodle place. I ate a lot of food. Yum. After that, we headed across the bay bridge to visit some of Tiff's friends from law school in Berkeley. We got some frozen yogurt from Yogurt Park (ah, the good old days) and walked around campus for a bit before finally driving back to SJ. I slept most of the ride home and went to bed around 1 or 2am.
Now I'm watching the Cal game and trying to organize my pictures. Yeah, it's nice to be back home.
The closed book went ok yesterday. From talking with Jon, Wayne, Suresh, and Aleks, I think I did well enough to pass that portion of the exam. Today, I take the open book portion. It's going to be a lot harder than the closed book, but it's going to be a lot harder for everybody, so I'm not as worried about it.
I went to ACE hardware and got some gardening tools this morning. Tiff cut away one of the bushes growing in our little vegetable garden area and discovered that the irrigation system for it is still in working order, so hopefully we'll get some squash, tomatoes, and basil planted soon. I think we'll need to get a desert gardening book too, because growing food in a desert can't be an easy thing.
Part of me is saying, "stop making such a big deal out of it, it's just a stupid exam." But most of me is like, ok, the culmination of a few weeks of studying is about to occur. I guess I'm just looking forward to it being over. I feel like I've studied as much as I can, so I really hope I pass...
I'm looking forward to it being over. There's an ultimate frisbee tournament on Saturday that I'll probably play in. I ordered posters of U2, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Elvis Presley a couple days ago. Hopefully they'll arrive soon so Tiff and I can figure out where to put them up.
Ironically, however, I'm making this post from work as I wait until 12:30, when I go sit in on "Life in the Universe", since I'm the TA for the class. Incidentally, no one has shown up for office hours yet.
But yeah, we finally got internet at home yesterday afternoon. I put the order in for service 2-3 weeks ago, so it's been quite a wait. Plus dealing with the wide variety of people at Cox that don't seem to have a clue as to what's going on was especially irritating.
T-minus 6 days and counting. I memorized the HR diagram for a 5 solar mass star from ZAMS (zero age main sequence) through the AGB (asymptotic giant branch) phase this morning after trying to teach it to Tiff last night and realizing how little I remembered. I hope the committee asks a question about it...
Just about time for class.
We had a house-warming party for our new place on Friday and it was bitchin'. We played the Norwegian game and I couldn't stop laughing. Some of the people were really good at acting, but of course the funniest people were the ones that had no clue what they were doing (like me).
On Sunday we helped friends of ours move into their new place and then had a bbq there. It was a lot of fun, but I think it means that now they need to have their own house-warming party. In other words, that bbq after the moving party doesn't count!
I'll be submitting a paper today to ApJ, the Astrophysical journal. I'm psyched to be done with it.