Playing from home.

I went up to NL this weekend for Steph's birthday celebration, which served the additional duty as being my first visit to her and Jason's excellent-looking new residence. Dinner was baked ham, bread and a spinach + goat cheese + craisins + almonds salad. Boy am I hankering for some of that ham right now. I saw a bright orange sunset from their porch and, if you don't mind dogs, the rest of the view - it overlooks our uncle's doggy daycare and grooming center - ain't so bad neither.

As a pleasant surprise, I got to meet Jason's parents and I really enjoyed talking to and hanging out with them. I can see why he's such a good feller.

We had brunch this morning at the Backside Inn (reason enough to visit home) near Mt. Sunapee, then went for a walk and did some grocery shopping to cap of a typically enjoyable visit.

Back to work!

Working from home.

Most of the heavy statistical stuff is done and I have generated enough graphs to last me to rest of the summer so now is the time to figure out why the "mixed" events (defined as "mixed" because they happen when the ionosphere above some of the magnetometer stations is in sunlight and above some, it is dark, and we think that sunlight changes the way these things lose power as they move toward the pole) behave as they do, to begin outlining the paper and writing what I can about the study and to read up on the connected theory so I can help Hyomin write that part of the paper. 

The best part is that I have found out how to make the demo version of IDL do the few remaining data analysis tasks so that all of this stuff can be done at my apartment! Certainly, my motivation is threatened, thereby risking supreme productivity, but I am a pretty motivated guy whose friends are understanding of his academic pursuits. Furthermore, Hyomin was gone this past week so there was really no reason for me to go into the MIRL where the chair wrecks my back, there is more human activity around me and there is less food for snackies. Next week will be back to a hybrid schedule.

The other night, I watched some wacky anime about someone stealing a new technology that allowed people to record digital video of their dreams for the sake of psychoanalysis. The movie gradually blurred the lines between real world and dreamland. There were dancing refrigerators and creepy dolls and, as you can guess, my own dreams were off-kilter that night. 

I'm headed up to NL in a few hours to celebrate Steph's birthday. Woot!

Weekend edition.

I went for a run on Friday but I couldn't find my proper running shoes so I used the closest thing I could find lurking in my shoe pile. As it turns out, those "running shoes" have running activated razor-blade arch support and they left my feet in worse shape than they found them. Subsequent runs will therefore have to wait until I located some better shoes. That night, Anna and I met some friends at the Chop Shop to hear music and to get taken for a ride by a too-crafty bartender: I, having been spoiled by the honesty and affordable prices at the Barley Pub, trusted this man to pour the reg'lag folk wine when I asked for a glass of cab for myself and for the lady. I bought another round for us and one more for a friend (riches are relative and I felt flush compared to them) before learning that I was paying $12 per glass. Lesson: don't expect to be treated like a regular at a place to which you rarely go. Optimist's Take: this was a good reminder that I and my friends need to buy our wine at a supermarket and enjoy it at someone's apartment. Movies and board games to the rescue!

On Saturday, I popped into the lab to install a new 1 terabyte hard drive that I bought through the expense account awarded to me as part of my SURF grant. I never thought storage was something to get excited about until I had a bunch of important data to back up. Now I'm a believer. After some food shopping, I left for the gig in Portland. Moses, his friend Jimmy and I played a bunch of Tom Waits songs at a restaurant where Moses used to work; we didn't charge a cover so if Mr. Waits wishes to contact us, I hope it will only be to ask how the show went. If that does happen, I will tell him that the show went very well and that a captive audience of Moses' friends and former co-workers were appreciative in spades. I will even tell him that this may translate into a few album sales; if nothing else, all the song learning reminded me that I love his music but don't own any. After the show, skipped town and made it to Newcastle in time to catch the end of Jill's birthday party, getting there just in time to see everyone in peak form before we all fell asleep to the sound of the ocean. Not together.

Today was what normal people call a typical Sunday. As you know, I endeavor not to be a normal person but to at least have a normal person's schedule. I listened to NPR, I did laundry and I went for a walk up Henry Law Avenue, making sure to stop to talk to the horses and cows at the farm on the top of that hill. There are a few musicky things going down tonight: Jake's band is playing in Kittery and Scott Solsky is playing jazz at the Pub. The latter is free and Jake will be playing the Pub on Wednesday with another band I like so it looks like I'll go to the Pub if I go anywhere. I just found out that Kristin has a copy of Beetlejuice so the third option is to stay in and watch that.

Happy Northern Hemisphere Summer Solstice

Happy Da's Day.

Be careful.

I spent all eight hours of my work day fixing a program problem that I thought would be out of the way before I had finished my coffee. Two lessons: 1) bugs are not isolated from their surrounding code; 2) double check your program the first time.

That is all.

Movies for movie-watching people who watch movies.

I am so inept at keeping up with current cinema that it ought to be a personal triumph when I watch four movies in twenty-four hours but, alas, three of them were repeats. Oh but what glorious repeats they were! Last night, much of the gang gathered to watch Newsies and we were having so much fun eating cheese, drinking wine and whiskey and talking over the television that we watched Spaceballs afterward. Then, as if I hadn't had enough of the above, Michaela and I put on Wayne's World, which actually watched us as we talked and talked, shutting up every so often to quote a line in time with the dialog. That's only three. The fourth, as you must have guessed since you're all real good math doers, was a new on (and seen in the theatre, no less). I spent most of my MIRL time outside the lab, reading up on some theory related to the ducting study, and that afforded me the chance to take a study break, during which I and some friends saw Up. All I really need to say is that it was typical Pixar, which is equivalent to saying that it was incredible.

In other news, it's too bad that I can't cook because my dinner tonight would have tasted even more delicious than it already did if I had any clue what to do in the kitchen.

Credit goes to my kitchen staff at 25 Everett Park for the meatloaf. the veggies are zucchinis, summer squash and carrots in a sauce built from garlic (pan-fried until golden brown), veggie stock, tomato base and tarragon (from my fire escape garden). The STARCH is cous cous.

My own worst enemy.

I don't have colon cancer.

I don't have an enlarged spleen.

I don't have a huge alien death worm in my intestines.

I just have an over-active imagination and...wait, I knew this!...a disobedient digestive system. The pain that I was feeling in my left chest area was just another manifestation of my cranky GI tract and the IBS took care of the rest of the discomfort. BUT, was better to hear today (from a professional) that those are the causes than to hear that any of my WebMD-bourne suspicions was true. Even if I could remember more details, I wouldn't make you sit through another paragraph filled with a description of my inner workings; I can now get back to awesomeness as usual.

The first order of such business will be to watch Newsies at Erin's apartment in an hour. Most of the whole crew will be there. I'm actually going to wear a newsboy cap.

Also awesome will be everything happening in the next week related to the ducting study since Marc thinks we're ready to start writing the paper. I better get my passive voice warmed up.

At the present, nothing else is to be considered news-worthy.

It is true that you will be talked to later by the author.

A reading Sunday.

We've had a quiet day, the plants and I. They took a long shower outside and I read a lot inside. I should say that both were welcome and productive in their own relaxed ways, though I didn't talk to the plants for long.

Last night, Moses and I played at the new Portsmouth location of the Loaf and Ladle (the original is in Exeter) to a typically sparse audience. Most of the people were friends of ours but I think we got a pair to come in off the street; I didn't get a reliable account of whether anyone knew them or not. Our duty is basically to help get the live music scene at the L & L, which started only last week and has featured only Moses and Friends in various manifestations, on its feet. Moses and anyone else he gets to show up will play on Tuesday evenings and we'll get food and drink in exchange for being a musical presence. I think that is a fair trade for the time being.

After I read for a while today, I got up the motivation to put together an Excel spreadsheet budget whose purpose was to be more detailed (and adjustable) than the pieces of paper I have sitting around here somewhere. With the numbers I put together, which are on the stingy side of honest (aside from having alloted zero dollars for going-out/fun money), I am in the red but just barely so. I did, however, find that I have enough in savings at this point to pay a year's worth of rent so I feel better. Otherwise, I hope I can bring in at least some meals during the school year by playing music. Of course, I will only ease my future financial burden by taking on the current psychological burden of working a bit at Friday's this summer. I have to admit that it makes it slightly easier to do so knowing both that they are willing to be flexible about it and that I have been honest with them about not working during the semester.

Kristin and I are going to take a walk around damp Dover.

Shhh

I was a quiet week and I was duly absent from Blogoland. Work at the lab has picked up, as promised, but all the progress I made this week was in writing code to analyze data; I haven't reached any impressive conclusions yet. Hyomin came up with some related statistics that we might want to include in the final report of this ducting analysis and Paul (the engineer) gave me an overview of the work a group of us is going to need to do in Antarctica in late December. That is in addition to the magnetometer system in northern Canada that needs to be fixed and I am not really sure what the story is with that anyway.

Last night I played pool and darts with some Friday's cooks. It was nice to hang out with them outside of work...It certainly has been longer than just my hiatus since we've had an extra-restaurant hang. Unfortunately, there were no goats around this time.

Tonight, I had back to Portsmouth for a friend's birthday get-together. The coming weekend will be my last free weekend before I return to Friday's. On Saturday night, I have a gig with Moses in Portsmouth. My camera is staring at me from its spot on my desk; I'll try to remember to bring it along so it doesn't get jealous.

Threefer

I have been so consistent lately - posting every day - that I feel like I ought to make this one a triple-decker to make up for missing Saturday and Sunday but I also eschew arbitrary guidelines, which means I don't gotta do what I don't wanna.

Fortunately for you, dear reader, I actually had a weekend worth talking about. On Saturday, I tracked down my friend Andrew at a local food and craft market where he was selling t-shirts he makes and while I was there, I bought a bunch of great food things from the other folks. I went with the intention of picking up a shirt that my friend owed to me but once I was there, I just couldn't lay off all the jams and mustards. I'm a sucker for supporting local anything.

Jim and Anna came over for dinner early that evening. Anna and I cooked Kasha with mushrooms and dill, we boiled artichokes and I fried up some po'k chops for Jim and myself. For the chops, I added chopped garlic and tarragon leaves after a good sear, then deglazed with stock and finished the sauce with some hot pepper jelly I bought at the market. Deliciousness ensued. Jim played at the Pub with a great musician named Dan Blakeslee (another local!) whose shows I hate to miss so we went down there after putting a good effort into thinking about washing the dishes.

On Sunday, my friend Erin and I drove to Jill's parents' farm. Ostensibly, we made the trip so we could sit by the pool and enjoy the sun, but when we arrived, the sun took off and we amused ourselves by talking to the animals, which is what I would have done anyway. For dinner, I cubed up some potatoes and onions, then did the same to some veggies (bell peppers, anise, zucchini and summer squash) and Jill put each group of fixin's into aluminum foil with butter, salt and pepper. Dave grilled steak and shark. Again, deliciousness was not excluded from the proceedings. At night we played some pool, watched the basketballers and fell asleep to Kung Fu Panda, which always reminds me that I shouldn't be so arrogant about my movie "taste" because a lot of those low-brow, goofy movies are exactly what I'm in the mood for.

I was back in the lab today at noon and had a full, productive day. Hyomin even had a chance to throw out a few more ideas about related topics to connect to this study so I have a bunch of avenues to pursue this week. If this were October, I would feel like they were hanging me out to dry but at this point, the chance to construct much of this phase of the project on my own (at least until the heavy theoretical part) is loads of fun.

Now, the moment we've all been waiting for...

Goat Dog!

I ought to take more photos.

On a late-evening walk about Dover yesterday, I remembered that I often posted photos to my San Francisco blog when words failed me. I feel like, given the regularity of lab work on a daily scale, I should take pictures of something and post them here for the sake of you, my faithful readers.

The deal with research now is finding which events occur during a period in which some of the magnetometer stations are in daylight and some are in darkness. (Actually, when I refer to the stations, what I really mean is the ionosphere above the stations.) Those are the tricky ones for the following reason: sunlight increases the conductivity of the ionosphere, which we believe affects the way that these events lose power on their trip to the pole. When all the stations are lit, we can just say that the event happened in daylight but how to we examine its power loss if it spends part of its time in sunlit ionosphere and part in darkness? That's what I'm working on now.

My friend Jake is going to take over Al's part of the lease for June - August. He finds himself recently homeless and Al has been trying to fund a subletee even since he unofficially moved in with Amy so I arranged the deal earlier this week. For those of you who remember my CCMS days, Jake played sax in the scholarship ensemble with me. I don't remember if he played tenor or alto.

So let's review: My homework is to take pictures of Dover, the ionosphere and fat birds. Your homework is to make it sunny again.

I got it pretty good.

After my long and eventful day yesterday, Michaela, Erin and I watched Woody Allen's "Sleeper," then I popped into the Pub to catch the last few songs of a friend's band's set. Both were great fun.

Because yesterday was a long day and because I accidentally turned off my alarm instead of hitting snooze this morning, I ended up rolling into work around the crack of noon but that's okay because even if anyone did notice, no one cares when I show up as long as I get the work done. That's a good job to be in. I won't do it often but I ought to enjoy the freedom a little in these next two weeks, before I go back to working a few shifts each week at Friday's.

Today was program, program, program as usual; I can say with certainty, however, that I am making progress. Matt Argall and I used to lament the fact that we were both writing code for the same project because it meant taking time to understand what each had written and I am finding that especially troublesome now that he isn't around to answer my questions. To wit, some of the "progress" is simply extracting information from his old code but that's what has to get done and it isn't a huge hang-up as song as the process doesn't take me weeks.

I love sunsets.

The Day

I was out in front of the NH State House this morning from 9:30 to 11:30, screaming and waving this sign along with hundreds of other supporters doing the same. I have never been more pleased to have a sore throat now that same-sex marriage is LEGAL IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. We are awesome. I probably don't need to remind everyone that the fight is not over: some group that can't see beyond its own self-perpetuating cloud of fear will try to strip away the law and we'll all just have to make another trip to Concord.

The little political foray meant that I didn't get into the lab until 1:00 but that was fine since the project is not moving very quickly yet. Marc is even busier than normal, it seems, so I have decided to take this week to play around with the data a bit, start analyzing some of the stuff that I didn't get to before AGU (there is plenty) and tie up loose ends before I try to pin him down for The Next Step.

That's about it from here. Nick, Mic, Erin and Jill and I went to a bar in Salem last night that had both great food and drink menus. It meant that I was a little tired this morning but it was an evening well-spent. See you tomorrow.

The first day of the days before some future date

Today was the first day of my SURF grant period at the lab and, as predicted, it felt like every other day at the lab. That's not to say, though, that I didn't move forward with my research. I have a renewed drive and sense of ownership of this study after AGU so I spent time today exploring some rogue events that didn't act like most of the others I analyzed. While the "well-behaved" events showed wave power decreasing linearly from Halley Bay toward the south magnetic pole, some events showed a peak in power at either P2 or South Pole station (that's the south geographic pole) and a drop-off on either side. I want to know if that drop off (i.e. power loss) is still linear on both sides.

Other than that, I did some housekeeping business related to sending data to Marc and Hyomin, and turning in receipts from AGU.

After one day, I am enjoying my 9-5. I like getting a taste of what I've been missing: getting up around 7, going to work at 9, taking lunch at noon and saying "alright, fine - I guess I'll just have to fix this tomorrow" at 5. The weather was delish, as well.