Better late than never.

As promised, here I will share here some pictures and a more thorough update of my AGU experience.

I have already told you about how long the drive out was; fortunately, the weather was nice enough that Kevin and I got a few interesting pictures of the sky et al.

We didn't do much besides go to bed on Saturday so that's one day down. On Sunday, we ate lunch at a cool place called Shopsy's where they serve a big menu and one or two beers worth drinking. I ordered a Keith's IPA and am sorry to report that the "IPA" part was interpreted liberally by the brewers. That's okay - I should stick to lagers, pilsners and whiskey in Canada anyway. I should add, though, that Shopsy's offers 1) free wi-fi and 2) an order of wings per couple with the first round of two drinks. I recommend.

We left Shopsy's to check out the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and to orient ourselves with respect to the AGU proceedings. The set-up was such that on one level were the meeting rooms in which took place all the presentations and on a lower level was the giant exhibition hall in which we set up our posters (when the allotted time came). The convention center, though, is HUGE and we only saw a wee part of it. I don't remember doing much more on Sunday.

On Monday, we began our proper learnin' by attending a morning's worth of presentations on "Ground Magnetometers in the New Millennium: Results and Prospects I," which were all way over our heads but interesting nonetheless. I like attending these things because, at the least, I hear some words that I want to look up and I get a feel of how these presentations are done. If I'm fortunate, I actually learn about some of the new science that the people in my immediate field are up to. I like the chance to meet these people, too.

In the convention center, Kevin and I met up with four other UNH students and the six of us decided to explore the city a bit by grabbing a quick dinner before heading up to the top of the 147-story CN Tower. The picture above is the one that came out the best but the following, though obscured a little by the glass, are also worth showing:

What's more is that they have a glass floor on the level just below where these were taken. Even though I claim to not have a fear of heights, it took me a second of hesitation to walk out onto it. Interestingly, I never felt like I didn't want to walk out over the glass but for that second, my body seemed to not let me. I guess that is supposed to happen.

That night we stayed out and visited some bars, paying waaaay too much for beer because we were tourists and let ourselves get trapped in the expensive section of the city. I suppose that no one can expect to walk into a city and know where to go right off the bat. We still had fun. 

On Tuesday, we went to presentations on "New Perspectives on Substorms and Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling I & II," which took all morning. It was in those sessions that I really got a sense of the community that must develop among people who work within the same sub-discipline. I don't mean that they give each other hugs and joke around during lectures; I mean that many work on a first-name basis, they often sight each other's research and a question from one to another usually sparked a discussion among many of the same people time after time. I liked seeing first hand that that sort of collaboration and accountability goes on. Later, when we stood by our posters, I was glad to see those same people showing interest in my and Kevin's work, especially when it became apparent that, as an undergrad, I had more questions than answers for them! I think that those poster sessions went well.

As an overall note, we noted that there was not equal representation among sub-disciplines: Earth science, geology et al. featured a lot of posters while atmospheric science showed fewer and space science had fewer still. I wonder if this is the case at every AGU meeting.

I have said already that the trip back was pleasantly uneventful, though the cloudy weather prevented us from taking anymore pictures of the landscape. Oh well. Here are some more Toronto pictures:

An excellent pilsner (micro-)brewed only in Toronto.

The Metro Toronto Convention Centre's south entrance.

That's the news from Toronto!

Or, There and Back Again.

Once again, I am throwing together a late-night blog with the hope that tomorrow (always tomorrow), I can be more thoughtful.

We made good time on the return trip, largely because it didn't take two hours to cross the border and because we didn't immediately hit night construction after crossing. I had a bit of a panic when, once in my own driveway, I couldn't find my keys but it turned out that I had just hidden them from myself exceptionally well. At last, it feels like the semester is over. After I loaded everything into the apartment, I started thinking about tomorrow, the trip up to NL and the weekend and my first thought was that I don't need to leave until the afternoon, which means that I can get some work done tomorrow during the day. But all the work has been done! Yahoo. I can find projects with which to occupy myself but I am not under the gun to accomplish anything by a deadline; that is a nice way to be.

There aren't many more pictures of the conference. I hope that I at least took notes well enough to paint word pictures and that you will accept those as my report. Thanks for playing along at home. I'm going to (my own) bed.

Lots of action

This conference is a busy place. We are busy boys and a girl. I just saw a few talks fly way over my head and Kevin and I are about to grab some lunch before coming back to stand in front of our posters. I wish I had time to tell you more but I will try to get back to this after the poster session, before the decompression session begins. We had good Indian food yesterday and Aroma India and we had a tasty and convenient gyro around midnight the other night from Alexander's (?) so there are my recommendations for eating in Toronto.

See you in the future.

Tour Ronto

The drive from New Hampshire to Toronto is 3 million miles and will take you 6 light years.

We didn't have a bad trip in the way of wrong turns and accidents but it was certainly long, especially at the border where everyone else happened to be. I think that we made good time, though I don't have a reference point, and I didn't mind driving because Kevin had uploaded a good mix of music onto his iPod and there were some good-looking scenes along I-90 through New York. The sunset was particularly pretty but unfortunately, by the time it was ready to go below the horizon, we could only see its glow over a concrete wall at the border.

The two of us went to the convention center this morning to scope out the scene and we met up with four other UNH students, somewhat serendipitously (though we knew they were around somewhere). We six checked out posters for a while, took advantage of the conference's daily free beer (yup) and went up the CN tower to get a view of ALL of Toronto. It is a tall building. I took pictures but I didn't bring my cable down to the lobby so I'll have to load them in the room and post them tomorrow.

Tomorrow is when the real science fun begins for us. There are some presentations we want to see in the morning, then we'll check out more posters during the day. I think I also ought to get my talking points in order for Tuesday so that I can respond informatively to those two people who ask about my poster.

I guess that's all I have in the way of an update at this point. We found out today that there is free wifi at the conference so I hope to be able to post some sort of update every day. See you then!

See you in the future.

I just got home from watching the baseball game and a mediocre movie with Dan Boisvert. I am soon to bed. The poster is done and, just like a final exam, I refuse to think about it for at least a day because there is nothing that can be done to change it. Actually, I was allowed to print a few drafts before I printed the copy that I now have rolled up safely in a plastic tube and I am pleased with the way out with which all those copies came. At the space science center, we have an odd sort of situation in which the people upon whom we rely the most are infinitely friendly and helpful: the man who runs the machine shop let me borrow tools within my first month at the MIRL and the man who runs the printing room forgot about an afternoon off in order to let a few of us print important posters. Maybe I got the wrong impression from that ghastly beast television but I thought that people in those powerful positions were supposed to be mean and difficult.

Take that, television! (Note: The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, PBS, NESN during Red Sox games, the Food Network, most Bravo and other honest networks/shows not included)

So like I said: off to bed. I will make an effort to keep you all up to date on the trip but I can not be sure that I will always have reliable internet (sarcastic and xenophobic anti-Canadian comments are left as an exercise for the reader).

Updates: the only dates I got.

The poster is soooo close. The window to print tomorrow is pretty tight, so I have to get my butt out of bed and into the lab (which is where I am at the moment) in order to make final changes with Hyomin. I actually got those lines-of-best-fit to look better because I realized that one station was throwing everything off. After some discussion with Marc and Hyomin, we decided to toss that station out of the final statistical analysis and ended up with cleaner (though still honest) results. It is always risky to play with data like that and I can feel Feynman's ghost watching closely over my shoulder every time I do it but I believe that we did not violate any rules in removing that station's contribution. I still haven't figured out how I can post an image of the damn thing so, again, I'll stop here with the details.

Unfortunately, though, those details are my only real update since all I did today was work on the poster :-) Oh, I did have some blood drawn (with crayons, I think, though I wasn't paying attention) at the Health Center and I rented a car for the trip. Kevin is now officially not allowed to drive the car but I'm sure I'll survive. It will be just like driving one-third of the way to Elmira, turning around to get something I forgot, then completing the trip. No sweat. We'll probably even have air conditioning and an XM radio so it will feel like a (cramped) vacation!

Alright, that's that. I might go catch some bluegrass before putting my caffeinated self to bed.

Partner in Crime.

Take a few minutes and read my friend Jason's comment, left on yesterday's entry. It is only tangentially related to my post but it's a little streak of literary sunshine on a blog that has been otherwise dull of late. Clearly, he is my PIC not only in physics but on the hyperweb as well.

When I went to bed last night, I had a sore arm and a case of acidic post-nasal drip, both of which I blame on the tetanus/diphtheria booster I received yesterday. I have an informal appointment tomorrow during which they'll do some stuff related to examining my kidney and liver functions but if I'm going to feel like crap for twenty-four hours afterwards, maybe I'll just skip it. On the subject of visits to the health center, I need to correct something that I wrote in my last entry: I do not have a heart murmur; I have a heart arrhythmia. Thanks to Steph for clearing that up.

Poster preparation is coming down to the wire - two days left to get everything squared away - but before I left the lab today, I finally got the IDL program to give me what I want: lines of best fit showing that event power attenuation is approximately linear as the wave propagates toward the pole. (Now that Jason is reading, I can use the nerdy words!) In all honesty, it's not that I got the results just before I left; it's that I left because I got the results. At that point, I said, "after six hours, I have what I need...I'm out of here." I won't go into more details - even for a physics student, it would be boring and hard to follow without visual aides - but this will save the conclusion section of my poster, which is the only missing part at this point.

I had a real tough time taking the bus home today; I think I have gotten too used to driving to campus. I stood at the usual bus stop and when the usual bus came, I got on (as usual). Then, I got off at the next stop because I remembered that the usual bus is the one I take to get to the commuter lot where I park my car, not to go to Dover. When the Dover bus finally arrived, I awkwardly showed my ID to the driver, which may have seemed suspicious, then in Dover, I pulled the cord late and he had to slow down quickly to let me off at my stop. Oops. I told myself that I was distracted and that it not entirely untrue.

End

The Final Exam.

Today, for the first time in years, I had a physical. I am all in one piece, although the excellent doctor had me hooked up to an EKG machine for a heart murmur that I have known about for a while and she also had me immunized against tetanus and diphtheria. There was some talk about going back in a few days (after a brief fast) so that they can check my liver and kidney function and I also made an appointment to see the nutritionist. That should do the trick of officially confirming what I already know: don't drink too much coffee, go easy on the booze, relax, eat a balanced diet, get enough sleep. You got it!

I made up for lost time again at the lab today. Hyomin noticed that some of the plots I planned on using are misleading; the reason is basically that they show decrease in power of these events traveling toward the South Pole as though the places at which the events are observed are equally spaced when, in fact, they are not so. At first, it seems like an aggravation to have to make new graphs less than  a week before the conference but I believe that these new plots will make it a lot easier to write a conclusion for the poster so I'm all for the extra work. Besides, all the best work happens at the last moment.

I think I'm also on vacation.

Don't call it a comeback.

I got an A- in thermo only a few days after telling my family that if I were to get a B, I would consider the course a success. I can't say anything for certain about the other two classes but I am relieved to think that I have come out in a favorable position after this year and now that I have gotten a wee taste of what the degree is going to be like, I am more motivated than terrified going into next fall. I am also resolved to spend some time this summer going over material for next year's classes so that I don't get caught by surprise (and just 'cause I can). What a dork.

Also in the way of comebacks: I lost my laptop power cord last week during the frenzy of review sessions and so finally broke down today and bought a new cable for $71 at the campus mac store. Buuuut, before leaving campus this afternoon, I made one last check in the Physics Dept. office and it just so happened that someone returned my cable a few hours earlier. So now I have two. If I think of it that way, I feel better about the expense.

I plan to spend the next few days getting ready for Toronto and cleaning my apartment. Maybe I'll get to read, too. I think that, for now, I'm going to stop sitting in front of this computer.

Finalsy!

Today was the first of two reading days before finals begin on Thursday. I have a final each day: Baby Physics is Thursday afternoon, Thermo is Friday morning and Calc is the morning of the following Monday. I looked at my time running time sheet for the lab and realized how few hours I spent actually "clocked in" last week. I think this week, though I have studying to do, will hold a much needed opportunity to get back to work on the AGU stuff. To wit, the science is basically done (Matt may have a few more plots to print out if he can fix one bug) and the balance of the business involves making a mostly good-looking poster to present on my day of reckoning. I have been using PowerPoint and I am not a PowerPoint master so I don't feel like I can make a supreme poster but I can certainly make a poster that looks good and...oh yeah, has the important stuff like the actual research results. Maybe by the next time Marc sends me somewhere to present, I will have wrapped my skills around some poster making program.

I have mentioned before that I benefit from having synthesis between at least two of my classes - that's to say they are covering related topics - at all times but lately, I have done myself one better. The final topic of the semester in Baby Physics was magnetism, following on the heels of electricity, and it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see how well that connects to working in the MIRL. At the very least, it keeps my motivation up.

That seems to be all the news from my end; everything around here is pretty quiet otherwise, though I did get to attend a nice hang last Saturday at Nick and Michaela's in honor of Effenburger's birthday. The whole gang was there. Woopee!

Not enough of a good thing.

When I went to bed last night, I had been awake for just over 40 hours. I pulled my first all-nighter of the school year and now that it is done and done, I think that one per year is probably a good rate. I may someday go as high as three but I really don't know what that would do to me (there's a movie reference there - anyone catch it?). The worthiness of an all-nighter is judged by assessing whether the time was spent significantly furthering progress on certain tasks that need to be accomplished soon and by that gauge, I would call it successful. The punch line to the process came when I showed up to calculus class (Awake Hour 26): the assignment due date has been extended to next Monday.

I didn't drink toooo much coffee but I had some extra so I ought to drink tea for the next few days to bring my tolerance back down. There is no happiness in being at the point where coffee has a negligible effect because then a person has to start drinking Red Bull and doing coke, both of which are getting prohibitively expensive.

The informational meeting for all summer grant/fellowship recipients took place yesterday afternoon and it was much more interesting than I expected it to be because although there were some forms to fill out and a few mentions of the dry details, there were also stories from previous recipients and I got the chance to find out that a few people I know also won grants. There were free cookies, of course. The other benefit of that meeting is that it re-motivated me to get through the end-of-semester push because it reminded me that there is a point to doing all the extra crap that we have to finish before finals. I have recently lamented the fact that in physics, we are only now covering magnetism and all the other business going down makes it hard to concentrate on and really absorb this part of the subject that is fundamental to our research at the MIRL. Now that I have had some relaxation (I went out to watch the baseball, basketball and hockey games last night before bed) and a good sleep, I'm gonna do me some physickin'. When I'm done with that, I'll of course do me some thermophysickin' and calculatin'.