Barely Coherent Blogging: Stuff just happens

My feet hurt, but I will endeavor to blog anyway.

Jess and I just got back from a pretty long run/rollerblade, a good 5 miles or so, which is pretty long for me, especially when running barefoot. I’ll probably have to get some better barefoot shoes soon, I’m starting to wear out the old ones, and there isn’t a whole lot of them to wear. Jess was on wheels, and was kind enough to slow down for me, I got pretty slow near the end.

We had a pretty relaxing week, overall. We spent a few days at home watching movies and cuddling on the couch, which is always nice. I started to feel bad about not going to Judo right up until the point where Jess grabbed my arm, cuddled my shoulder, and made a contented noise. Then I didn’t feel so bad about anything, really.

There’s a decided lull in new video game releases during the summer, or at least ones I care about, which has the nice effect of making me do other stuff for a while. I’ve been working on music and reading a LOT of books. I’ve gone through a significant percentage of our previous book splurge, and so I got to buy some of the sequels to the books I’ve already worked through. Books like:

Hyperion: A Hugo Award-winning book. Really good, very atmospheric and interesting. I got the sequel today.

Mistborn: Written by Brandon Sanderson, an author I’d been hearing a lot about (he’s writing the last books in the wheel of time series). Quite good, he writes books with really interesting magic systems, totally different than anything you’re used to and quite intriguing.

The Cobra Trilogy: Written by Timothy Zahn, and pretty much anything by him, I will read. Not a bad series, either, full of interesting ideas and good twists that you usually don’t see coming. I always like when a book does that successfully.

Tomorrow I get to go eat lunch with an old friend from Juneau who lives here in Austin now. So exciting! And then next week I get to head up to Dallas to get a polygraph taken. Significantly less exciting!

-N

If I go to baby showers, does that mean I live here?

I mentioned in my last post that I was headed to a baby shower. It struck me as I picked up one of my coworkers that it was a fairly sitcom worthy idea that I would drive nearly an hour out into the suburbs to attend a baby shower. It seems like such an adult thing- having friends in the suburbs. Who are having babies.

Going to Matt's company picnic, and now this, were quiet reminders that it really sucks to live so far away from your family. At the shower, I knew a couple of my coworkers, but mostly my pregnant friend had invited a whole host of people, family and a lifetime of friends, I'd never met before. Enough to make for a comfortable but lively shower atmosphere. So while part of me was moping that my family is so far away, there was another part of me that felt like I'd arrived. This is obviously a really significant time for my friend- and I was there. I was significant enough to participate in this important event with her. I was one of the intimates. Maybe I've been doing more here than just whiling away the hours whinging about work and daydreaming about vacations. Maybe, despite all my bellyaching, we've actually set up a life here.

Sometimes I wonder if Pittsburgh will someday be like Bellingham- full of very fond memories but difficult to go back and visit. Most people I know here plan to move away within a few years. In 5 years, will I have any reason to come back? I suppose rather than worry about that, I will just keep living as large as possible.

New Window = New Wall

Well, in order to replace the bathroom window with saftey glass, we needed to replace the whole fixture. Couldn't just get replacement glass that would be anything other than single sheet, non-insulated nothin'.. In any case, it required us to strip the outer wall, re-sheath it for strength and allowed us to put another layer of foam insulation on the outside, which is good. The old fixture was hacked into place with spikes and stuff and was destroyed on removal. No loss...See the pics

What to do on the hottest days of summer?

A) Participate in a Soccer Tournament
B) Go to a company picnic, and participate in a shop tour
C) Take in the movie theatre's AC while watching Despicable Me
D) All of the Above

If you picked D, you would have a perfect description of my weekend. Yes, several very bad choices to combine with heat, and lots of fun. As for the Soccer Tourney, my Canadian friend had decided to organize a tournament for the department. Six labs and groups organized teams, and I decided to go out an cheer. I decided to cheer before I realized it would be 95, and then I decided I should probably go to ply my coworkers with cold water before they became delirious. The tournament itself seemed like a lot of stress for my friend (an opposing goalie slide tackled several of our players, someone had a non-departmental player, another group showed up and thought they had the field reserved), but everyone else had a good time.

Saturday was the 100 year anniversary company picnic at Matt's work. They've been talking about this for month, but Matt just recently decided we should go, so I went to be supportive. I did meet some of his coworkers, see his cubicle, and wander around the "shop floor" which is really a compressor factory, which converted to a giant oven for the occasion. Very industrial scale. We attached ourselves to one of his friends whose whole family came out to participate. The grandad said that when he worked in the steel mill, they used to have this type of celebration every year, and so they all felt quite obliged to be supportive. Matt wanted me there to show me where he worked, I don't think to show off, but just so I could get a picture of it. But we passed hundreds of other family groups, proudly showing the impeller things they designed, or casings they milled. I think the PA mindset is more receptive to this type of event. Celebrating the great things Corporate has done for us made Matt a bit uncomfortable, but everyone else happily embraced it. By the time we left, the thermometer on the plant was reading over 100.

After a nap (well, Matt went to see the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix car show), we decided to do something sensible, and go see Despicable Me. I laughed a lot (but I always do). We saw it in 2D, but there were several scenes (roller coaster ride?) that might make you sick in 3D. It was a sweet story, and while it wasn't quite as funny as I wanted it to be, I did enjoy it a lot.

For the rest of today, I am off to a baby shower while Matt stays a home trying not to get too hot again.

Weekend Report

I know it's early in the weekend yet, but you guys deserve some blog posting.

Happy birthday, of course, to all people whose births took place over the last week. We're glad to have you around. We've had some new happenings around here, too. Yesterday (friday night) we went out to a new Snow Cone shop being opened by a couple of girls at roller derby. We had a few: all quite good, so if any of you ever happen to be in the east side of Austin in search of cold treats, check out Ice Queens. They've got *flavor*. Jess met with a bunch of roller chicks and then skated around for exercise and to pass out fliers. And then she had some snow cone afterwards. I hung out with some of the girls I know from hockey, and then red my book for a while and wandered around the neighborhood a bit with my phone looking for interesting locales. I almost bought a Po' Boy at a shop across the street, but I'm trying to munch less. There was also a store that sold electronic music gear: synthesizers and the like. As if I need more gear.

Let me tell you something about hummingbirds. We've got our feeder up and full and we've been getting a pretty good run of little buzzers coming in and having their fill. They are, of course, very territorial, and we've been having a quite good time watching them swoop up, eat, and then get dive-bombed by one of their rivals. I couldn't quite tell you what kind they are, though I've been looking at backs and throats in an attempt to identify them. I tell you what, though. Nagano has been *enthralled*. Every once in a while he'll spot one and just stare with his huge eyes or make adorable little cackling sounds while pretending he is a vicious hunter.

Jess let me cook salmon for dinner, and it came out pretty good. We got some wild salmon from whole foods (I don't trust the farmed stuff they sell at the regular supermarket) and covered it with brown sugar. I also took a section for experiments: a little bit with BBQ sauce and a little with gingersnaps: inspired by an Alton Brown Ham Glaze recipe. The cooking went pretty well, though I did have some flameups and the board didn't smoke quite as much as I had hoped. I was pleased, however, that I'd saved a bunch of money by just going off to Lowes and buying my own darn cedar board and then cutting off a plank of the appropriate size. First use of my fancy battery-powered circular saw, too. Thanks dad!

Anyway, the food? Pretty spectacular, Jess ate some and seemed to enjoy herself. The Brown sugar went best, though it didn't quite caramelize and get all smokey like I had hoped. Practice practice, I suppose. The BBQ sauce was pretty bland and tasted like, well, bbq sauce and salmon. Which isn't bad, but the other flavors were better. The gingersnaps were actually pretty well received. Right off the grill they gave a nice crunch and good flavor. Unfortunately as leftovers the cookie crumbs got all soggy. Less good. I got to cook salmon, though. Hurrah!

I may come back later and post some random pictures, but our camera is currently on the fritz. Love to all!

-N

It's my birthday!

I'm not normally someone who needs the all out attention on my birthday, but this year I considered taking the day off. Mostly because I thought I might be able to leverage the birthday excuse into finally getting some rest, but work has become such a habit these days.

I went for a birthday donut with one of the people I was in Madison with. A new Dunkin Donuts opened up just a few blocks from work that is obviously going to change the meeting food landscape. My awesome coworkers brought in a cheesecake that we ate this afternoon- but just as I was digging in, Dr. Rockstar's tech came down to tell me the freezer will all my expensive reagents was failing. PANIC. Actually, it's no big deal- they have space for all my overflow, and all these reagents gets frozen and thawed a couple times with no problem. At least someone caught it quickly.

After work I am going to catch a drink with a friend, and then Matt and I are going to go for Ethiopian food. Maybe if I haven't made a pig of myself (unlikely, considering the awesomeness of Ethiopian food), we'll go to the Razzyfresh. All in all- good day.

Madison- the final score

I arrived home late last night- we didn't get an especially early start, and were waylaid for the Chicago's traditional "Park on the Highway Sunday" Festivities. (I'm never celebrating THAT holiday again) Although it was a long day, it was really good to be captive with my coworkers (from Dr. Rockstar's lab) while we tried to sort through all the new viewpoints from the meeting. And this happily transitioned into discussions of careers, dealings with the boss, navigating grad school- interspersed with a lot of Hindi music and coffee.

I can even admit to a passing bit of nostaligia. I met some really great people, who would likely be my peers and collegues if I chose to stay in this field. As it is, I don't think other fields have an equivalent beer-and-coffee-fueled, hierarchy-leveling, story-swapping, Summer-Camp-feeling experience. And the particular great people I met this time, I would really like to be seeing again. And... honestly, I think this may be the last science conference I'll ever have the privilege and obligation of attending.

All told, the final score mounts up like this:
24 total hours on the road
5 total days of meetings and sunshine
12 minutes of my talk, and 4 questions answered
~70 other talks attended
1 rockin' show from Dr. Rockstar's band
New friends from 9 countries

Looks like it was a success to me!

River cleaning patrol

There’s a lake/stream/creek/whatever you want to call it north of us called Brushy Creek, and we’re always driving over it and seeing people on Kayaks going underneath. Well in the search for something interesting to do with our weekends, we went up and rented some. The lake was very pretty, and we tooled around for a while seeing the sights along the banks. When we went under the bridge we had been driving over so many times we saw that the bottom was covered with mud-dauber nests, a good few hundred of them, most with little baby birds and a couple of frazzled parents running back and forth catching bugs and bringing them back home. Kids are so unappreciative of what their parents go through. :)

We went under the bridge and continued on for a while against the current until the lake turned into a river, and then a creek, and then a little stream. We ended up going under another bridge but just a few feet past that the river became so narrow we were bottoming out The Kayaks, so we turned around.

On the way back, mindful of Papa’s ever-present call to leave the campground better than we left it, we stopped off many times along the side of the river and picked up trash and stuff from among the roots. It lengthened our trip by quite a while, but it was pretty entertaining and exciting, especially when I noticed a three inch wide spider in my boat. No lie. Thing was huge. Jess came over to look at it and then swept it off my boat. She said she was glad it happened to me, because she would have freaked out.

Anyway, here’s the pictures we took at the end of the trip. As you can tell, we got a lot of trash. The people who rented us the kayaks were so pleased that they waived an hour of our boat fee. We’re quite proud, and the lake is a little bit cleaner for our efforts.




-N

Finished the talk!

Today was my big day! All day I was feeling queasy about actually having to give the talk, which was of course, not until the end of the day. I could hardly focus, hardly slept, hardly ate- it was miserable. I'm not really sure why I felt so physically about this- I've pretty much already made up my mind that I don't need to impress this bunch in terms of my career, and that my data stands on it's own as impressive enough to deal with any curmudgeonly comments. But I was literally trembling before my talk (perhaps a combination low blood sugar and sleep).

I've been going over my talk every day, I know my slides solid. So once I got up there, here it goes- "let me tell you about my exciting research...." 12 minutes in, I'm answering a couple questions (one weird one, 2 fine ones- nothing even close to what I prepared to answer). And... done. My obligation at this meeting is complete. Afterward, one of my committee members rehashed a comment he made at my last meeting, and now I'm in a slightly better mindset to consider it.

And then one of the members of Dr. Rockstar's lab and I went out for Afghani food, and enjoyed some beers by the lake at the union. We even got to hang out with the "Young European Faculty" cool kids. They liked my talk. Dr. Rockstar himself even said my talk was his second favorite of the whole meeting. His real favorite was pretty good, too.

So yeah, you know. I gave a talk at a national meeting. No big deal.

Madison-first update

I am starting to regret the carpe diem decision to drive out to Madison. Starting a brutal week of science by rolling in from an exhanusting long drive is not good brain management. We left Ptitsburgh at 5am Tuesday, arriving is sufficient time to make the 5pm happy hour, and remain physically present for the talks until 10pm. At this point, we promptly wimped out, instead of hanging around to chat up our future collaborators. We got an eye roll and a tut-tut from Dr. Rockstar for going to bed 'early.' Here we are at day 2, and I don't feel sufficiently recovered to drink anything but coffee all day long. This, or course, leaves a body feeling like a jittery shell- not like a brilliant scientist. Fortunately, the only scientists here that I am especially eager to please are some good ol' boys from the FDA, and they don't stay out late to drink beers. I'll get up early and meet them for breakfast instead.

So far, all is quiet on the scoop front. This is a great relief- I am sure we've got at least the 6 months I think I need to publish this story in peace. The few competitors with overlapping interests seemed to have either dropped their efforts or be far enough behind that I am not so worried. For now. I'm emailing updates back to Dr. Boss in an effort to keep him in the loop. Otherwise, I am here with two of Dr. Rockstar's grad students, and happy not to need to be the life of the party.

Random Shenanigans

While not speaking in front of any major national conventions, I’ve been up to some things of my own.

The “wow new toy” sheen has worn off the phones, and they’ve settled in as mighty, mighty useful pieces of equipment. I still haven’t explored all of the functionality, and it’s neat really just to browse around the phone and learn all the neat stuff it can do. I find myself using it for navigation, looking up silly things online at random, the occasional video and the so-useful-I’m-not-sure-how-I-lived-without-it functionality of a speaker phone. Jess really likes hers, too. It’s not cheap, but it promises to be, with luck, worth the cost.

I made some more bread this weekend. My whole wheat loaf is much improved over previous iterations, though I have to be careful to really let it rise like crazy, because unlike regular bread loves which rise pretty significantly after you put them in the oven, the wheat loves pretty much just bake into whatever shape they were when they went in there. And you can loose some volume off putting the thermometer in there, too. I also found, finally, a good way to make cheesy bread so that you don’t get loaves with big, cheezy holes in the middle. Essentially they’re just great big cinnamon rolls, except with cheese instead of cinnamon. Jess really liked those ones.

Judo, have I not talked about it much before? Well I’m still doing it and it’s a blast. It combines many of my favorite aspects of a martial art:
1) It’s competitive. Not aggressively so, but it’s always good to have an art where you can try things out and if you’re doing it wrong, you’ll know, because it *won’t work*. It’s also nice because the looser doesn’t get knocked out, just thrown down. I can take that kind of defeat.
2) It’s really good exercise. Mostly for those core muscles in the middle. Because it’s just fall down, get up, fall down, get up, for an hour and a half. Just standing up is enough to break a serious sweat.
3) I get to practice falling. Let’s be honest, here, I’m not likely to ever get into a fight. But I’m sure to fall over one day, and being able to do so safely is a very useful skill.
4) No contracts. I’ve learned my lesson on that one.

We’re in the summer doldrums, of a sort, for video games, in that there is little of note that is coming out until the really big stuff hits for the holiday season. Lucky for me, this means I get to go back and play some stuff I missed from last year. As well as catch up on reading and making music. And baking bread.

We found a farmers market! And, lucky us, it’s actually going to be moving *closer* to us next week. It’s peach season round here, so we got 8 or so of them for munching later. They’re ripening as we speak. I drool with hunger! We also got some veggies and made up some salad for dinner. Little (tasty) tomatoes and some sort of Zuccini variant that is crisp and delightful. I’m looking forward to learning my way around that place better.

Jessie has been skating like a maniac. She took, I think, one day off last week. The rest of the time she was on wheels either for hockey or for derby. Her recreational league had a (closed door) game this weekend and she has actually been a team leader for a few weeks. Well it turns out all that work on proper lineups and the excellent leadership that comes with a positive attitude rubbed off on the team because they *DOMINATED* the opposing team. From the sound of it, her team gelled quite well, everyone skated to their utmost potential, and Jess scored MASSIVE points when she got to be the jammer a couple of times. Next time you see her, make sure you let her know that you are in awe of her skills, because she doesn't quite seem to grasp how great she is on wheels.

-N

sports and culture fallout

I know there aren't that many Seattle sports fans on this blog, but I can't help pointing out the news about Cliff Lee, the star pitcher who will henceforth display his excellence in a Dallas Cowboys, er Texas Ranger uniform.

As many of you know, the Seattle Opera Association has been working for the last couple of years on commissioning a modern-day follow up to the Wagner Ring saga which had been such a huge hit for them over the years. The adaptation was going to focus on the sad history of Seattle sports, with characters based on Lauren Jackson, the Storm basketball star, as the Queen of the Valkeries, a Coach Mike Holmgren look-alike playing Wotan, and either Ken Griffey or Alex Rodriquez playing young Siegfried. There were other characters and roles involved, Gary Payton and Billie Jo Hobart, Nate Robinson etc.

But with the loss of Cliff Lee, apparently the sponsors decided the whole topic was just too sad, too tragic, and too depressing even for grand opera. Now the plan is to just do a version of Romeo and Juliet set in Rwanda.

It's supposed to be a lot more cheerful . . . .

Welcome to the future

Jess and I just got new phones.

They have the ability to go onto the internet, browse any web page, and view full motion video of my favorite TV shows any time of day or night. I can download games and play them *instantaneously* as soon as the fancy strikes. It has an enormous, gorgeous screen, and it will allow Jess and I to *video chat* with each other (once we get the kinks worked out). It's wireless, it can talk to my home internet, it gives me directions, it updates my facebook page, it plays music, it does banking, chatting, blogging, scans bar codes, looks up restaurant reviews and pretty much does anything else I want it to do. It's a touch screen. It's a computer in my pocket.

I live in the future.

You can keep the rest! Flying cars would be terribly difficult to fly, and I'm sure robots are on the way just as soon as we can get them to work properly. Playing with this phone sounds just like all the stuff we got promised by "Beyond 2000" back when the future was all bright, shiny, and confusing. It's really something else.

-N

Practicing,...

The next major event on my list this week was to practice the talk (The meeting is July 13-18, my talk will be on the 16th). I was scheduled to give lab meeting for Dr. Rockstar's lab, and since they are the experts in this field (not Dr. Boss's lab), I elected to practice for them. Dr. Boss and I had work through the slides, but I had carefully chosen all my words yet. My undergrad told me he was excited to come see me talk. I cringe, but I can picture how flattered/interested he must be to see his work fit neatly into the bigger picture.

My twelve minute talk was done in 10 hyperventilating minutes. Fortunately, Team Rockstar had good suggestions for me. I feel good about this- I prefer to give bad practice talks, gets the nerves out early, and practices all the pitfalls so they are easier to avoid in the future.

It all boils down to this- I am nervous about presenting this work because I feel like any fool with an inkling would make the same choices we did, do the same experiments, and end up with the same results. That is the blessing and curse of science- given the same results, we should all be able to make the same conclusion. Since it seems so painfully obvious to me, I skip past describing in detail the experiments I actually perform- they aren't hard, but I am the only one in the field that still does these things. Oh. Right. In fact, working for Dr. Boss (who is not a virologist), means that none of the assumptions of my work would be obvious to a virologist. That is the beauty of working for Dr. Boss. Team Rockstar also helped me through so sticky points- make the hypothesis sound stronger, connect some ideas more often. There were some opposite suggestions to what Dr. Boss had suggested, which made Dr. Boss laugh. With yet more practice, it can indeed be a good talk.

Next Lesson

Summer brings in a new batch of HHMI fellow- the top notch research students I worked with during the school year- which means, they need to talk about ethics! And, weirdly, no one else volunteers to talk with undergrads about this stuff. It was a good chance to get some more course material for the fall, and try some new things before I commit them to my syllabus. Registration for the real class in the fall is still open- someone withdrew (aw, man!), but I have 6 students to work with.

We did a couple small case studies, and then talked about an article detailing a longer (very difficult) case of scientific misconduct. The short case studies were good ice breakers- but next time, I wouldn't do more then one at once. And for the most part, they seemed to get the points raised by the longer case study. It was a really sad case about how scientific misconduct (by a boss) ruined a bunch of student's prospects- ugh. When we finished, I immediately thought "That went awesome!" but I think I need to come up with a better metric for success then "No one cried or quit science."

It's getting easier- disarming the awkward silence, redirecting the errant conversation, getting to the point without rushing past it. I still feel like I talk too much- but, well, no one cried or quit science, so I must have been a success!

I FINALLY MADE MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! these are spare exclamation points in case the ones in the title are insufficient to display my excitement!

Oh man, finally! I've been trying off and on on weekends for a while, and I finally, FINALLY made something I'm proud of having produced! Man that feels good! Whoo! All right!

High fives!

Oh, you want to listen to it? I'll bet you do. So here you go, click the link and enjoy:

Noel Preecs -- The First Song I've liked

If you have flash on your computer (most modern ones do) it should start playing automatically. There's a little 'download' link under the player if you want to save it for yourself and put it on your Ipod and listen to it over and over because it is so great.

I wouldn't blame you.

Yay! I wonder if I can make another one before the long weekend is out? I plan to give it a try. Part of the reason I've had success is that I've been cut off from video games. By choice, of course. There's a game coming out on Thursday that I'm excited about, and I finished the previous one, but buying an interim game for the long weekend seemed a little unnecessary. So instead of playing games all weekend, I've been trying to write music. I got stymied early yesterday, but did, eventually, manage to put together something I actually enjoyed.

As for our fourth, we've invited some of Jessie's cousins, who also live in Austin, up to have some grill time and shoot off fireworks. Fireworks are usually not allowed in Austin, but we're *technically* not part of Austin, and so they're okay for us! It's even been raining this week, so in addition to it not being illegal, it's also not a dangerously horrible idea. I got us a bunch of different types of fireworks, and we'll lite them off later when it gets darker. Should be fun.

Yay music!

-N

Going to Madison

I got some good news earlier this week- I've been given a spot to speak at the National Conference of my especial sub-field. This is a meeting I went to a couple years ago (remember Dr. BigBucks?), and actually speaking about my research is a HUGE deal for me. Hands down the biggest thing I've done for my career- sharing my work with the experts in my field in a public forum.

And it makes me feel quite sick. I have 12 minutes to describe the last three years of work - not hard per say, unless you want it to be interesting or convincing. Actually, all that work boils down to just a couple of figures. Ugh. And Dr. Boss won't be there- so if there is a showdown, um, well- it's all me.

Dr. Boss has been very supportive, we've talked through what should go in to the talk (what SHOULDn't go in to the talk), how to frame it, and I'll probably talk to him about it again today, again Monday, and Wednesday I'll give a practice talk. I'm still very nervous, but the best way to deal with that is make it a very polished talk.