Today I bought hard drive space on google's servers so I can upload pictures with Picasa, google's photo organizer. It's pretty good software that makes downloading images to my computer and then uploading them to the web a fairly easy process.
The new album home page will be here. You should be able to comment on any picture if you have a google account. You can also do other cool stuff with it like search for any phrase or word that appears in the title or description of a photo album. I hope it turns out well, since I shelled out $25 for a year's worth of 6GB.
I just decided to postpone the oral prelim until after the Christmas holidays. I feel completely exhausted and completely drained. I just don't feel prepared enough to take it on Friday. It's too rushed and I'm too stressed right now to take the exam confidently.
So I just talked with one of the members of my committee, and he made it sound like the only difference between the retake and the original oral prelim was that I would be giving a different presentation, one on star formation instead of the research I've done. But then the questions after that would be basically on anything related to my research, including instrumentation!! I haven't been studying anything related to instrumentation! This is bullshit and it's making me re-think taking it so soon. Technically, since I have only one opportunity to retake the exam, I have up to six months to get my shit together and pass. At the time of the original prelim, the committee recommended a short timescale, something like a month before retaking it. I agreed, but under the impression that only questions related to star formation would be asked of me following the presentation. Now it appears that is no longer the case, so I'm feeling pretty upside down right now.
I'll be talking to Walker soon. We'll see what happens from that.
EDIT: 1 hour later.
So I talked to Walker and he basically said it's up to me. I also talked with the graduate student liason, and he said that officially the topics of discussion should not change for the second taking of the exam, meaning that in principle I could be questioned about anything related to my research during the retake, including instrumentation.
The thought of delaying this misery even longer is practically unbearable, but if I walk into that examination room unprepared, then my career as an astronomer is over before it even begins, sort of like the pre-main sequence lifetime of a star of mass greater than 8 solar masses, which hits the main sequence before collapse/accretion has shut off (t_KH << t_collapse) and therefore has no PMS evolutionary state.
They descended upon the creative projects and tore them to bits and pieces.
So I spent like an hour sorting these creative projects that students had to do for the class I'm TAing. I put them in a box in the classroom and left to get a few more projects. When I got back, the students were swarming around the table the box was on. It was like oh man what was it like. Shit, it was like seeing a swarm of bees on a jar of honey. Except that bees are at least somewhat neat. These kids just tossed the papers everywhere, completely ignoring the possibility that they were alphabetically sorted. Heroically, I tried in vain to find the few papers that were somewhat still sorted and separate them around the room like I had planned.
Around this time, to add to the humor of the situation, my belt fell apart. I happened to be wearing very baggy pants, so I had to use one hand to hold my pants up and the other to put papers down wherever they were supposed to go. Meanwhile, students continually came up to me asking me where their project was. "I don't frickin' know where it is! Go look yourself!" Ugh.
Fortunately, I can at least go home now and take a break. Oh wait, that's right, I can't. If I don't pass this stupid fucking prelim exam I can't continue in grad school. Excuse my language, sorry.
It's weird. When I come in to work these days and I unlock the door to get into my office, I have these visions of my name outside the door fading away, resulting of course from my failure to pass the oral prelim exam a second time. I've been studying hard, but I have a hard committee and I just don't know where to get help. I don't even know if I need help. I hope the four weeks from Nov. 17 to Dec. 15 will mark the most difficult time in grad school for me.
I hurt my back over the weekend playing ultimate frisbee in a tournament. Actually, I think it's a combination of hunching over studying all day long and running hard for frisbee. It's too bad too, because it would have been fun and good to get some exercise while studying.
On the other hand, Tiffany and I put up some Christmas decorations over the weekend and now the house looks fantastic! I don't have any pictures yet, but I'm hoping I will soon. We put up lights around the outside of the house in two places. First, big ones on the top lining of the front part of the house over the porch. Second, going out of the back window over the back wall and around the archway thing-a-ma-jigger. We also put a string of blue lights in the window of our bedroom and it's mega mad off the hook yo! It really does look cool at night in our bedroom now. We also have a christmas tree in our living room, complete with lights and some ornaments too! We'll need more ornaments, but I think we'll make some tonight while hopefully watching the Sharks beat up on the Stars.